Amid reports that Mumbai had reported India’s first case of the highly transmissible ‘XE’ Covid-19 variant, Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Thursday sought to allay fears and said the state department had not yet received a confirmatory report from the Centre or the National Institute of Biologicals (NIB) about the presence of the new variant.
“As per information, the ‘XE’ variant is more infectious than the Omicron variant which is like flu. We’ll talk more about it in detail after getting a report; haven’t received a confirmatory report from the Centre or NIB, so Maharashtra’s health department doesn’t confirm it,” Tope said.
He added that there was no need to panic or bring back restrictions which had been eased in the state following a decline in Covid-19 cases.
Panic spread in the maximum city on Wednesday when Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation said of the 230 samples from Mumbai, 228 samples are of the Omicron variant and one patient is infected by the ‘Kapa’ subtype, while the other is by the ‘XE’ subtype of Covid-19.
However, INSACOG, which conducted the genomic analysis of the sample, told CNN-News18 that evidence does not suggest that the sample has the XE variant.
“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,” the sources said. INSACOG is a national consortium of 52 institutions involved in genome sequencing of the coronavirus.
A top official at INSACOG reiterated to CNN-News18 that XE Variant is not detected in India, adding that the referred sample belongs to the period of March 2, 2022.
Reacting to the development, BMC said that at Wednesday’s INSACOG meeting, “we have been asked to send the sequencing data to NIBMG (National Institute of Biomedical Genomics) for further analysis to confirm the XE variant”.
XE variant was first detected in the UK on January 19. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the XE recombinant only accounts for a small fraction of the cases, but its extremely high transmissibility could mean that it becomes the most dominant strain in the near future.
The news came on a day when Mumbai achieved the remarkable feat of fully vaccinating all eligible beneficiaries above the age of 18 years against Covid-19. The BMC said it has administered 92,42,888 second doses as on Tuesday against the original target of 92,36,500.
Read all the Latest News India and Breaking News here
Comments
0 comment