Earlier this week, a patient with foreign travel history was reported to have contacted the XE variant but the Health Ministry had denied the report saying that the “present evidence does not suggest the presence of the new variant”.
“Hours after report of detection of XE variant of Coronavirus in Mumbai, @MoHFW_INDIA has said present evidence does not suggest the presence of the new variant,” PIB Maharashtra said in a tweet on Thursday.
It referred to the Health Ministry clarification on the reported case of COVID XE Variant in Mumbai.
The Health Ministry said FastQ files in respect of the sample, which is being said to be #XEVariant were analysed in detail by genomic experts of INSACOG who have inferred that the genomic constitution of this variant does not correlate with the genomic picture of ‘XE’ variant”.
The new mutant may be more transmissible than any strain of COVID-19, World Health Organisation had said last week.
The World Health Organisation had recently said that a new COVID mutant ‘XE’ has been found in the UK and noted that it may be more transmissible than the BA.2 sublineage of COVID-19. However, the virologists in India have said that it is not clear that the variant is strong enough to cause another COVID wave in the country even as they advised to exercise caution and follow COVID-appropriate behaviour.
XE is recombinant of Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 sublineages of COVID-19.
“The XE recombinant (BA.1-BA.2), was first detected in the United Kingdom on January 19 and >600 sequences have been reported and confirmed since,” the WHO had said.
With inputs from NDTV
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