NEW DELHI, April 6: Within Hours after Mumbai’s civic body Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) claimed to have detect the first case in the country of the XE variant of coronavirus, the Union Health Ministry rejected the claim and said present evidence did not suggest the presence of the new variant.
The Mumbai’s civic body on Wednesday claimed that a case of the new XE variant of coronavirus has been detected in the city. However, sources close to the Union Health Ministry said the genome sequencing of the patient’s sample does not indicate the presence of the XE variant.
The 50-year-old woman patient, a professional costume designer, is fully vaccinated against the virus and has shown no symptoms so far. She also suffers from no comorbidities, a civil official had said.
However, Health Ministry sources denied the presence of the XE variant in the patient’s sample. “FastQ files in respect of the sample, which is being said to be ‘XE’ variant 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,” official sources said.
The BMC had earlier stated that it according to their findings was the first case of XE variant but the sample would be sent to the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG) for further analysis to confirm the new variant.
According to the BMC, the patient had arrived from South Africa on February 10, 2022. On arrival in India, she tested negative for Covid-19 but on March 2, 2022, during routine testing, she was found to be positive, following which she was quarantined. However, the next day, her samples returned negative.
The new variant XE is a mutant hybrid of two versions of Omicron – BA.1 and BA.2. It only accounts for a small fraction of cases across the globe at the moment. The new mutation appeared to be around 10 per cent more transmissible than the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron, as per the World Health Organisation.
Until now, the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron was considered the most contagious strain of Covid-19. If this new research is confirmed, it would make XE the most transmissible Covid-19 mutant yet.
(Manas Dasgupta)