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 the apprehensions and said the state department is yet to Have not received a confirmation report from Center or National. The Institute of Biologicals (NIB) informed about the presence of the new variant.
“As per information, ‘XE’ variant is more contagious than Omicron variant which is flu like. We will talk about it in detail once we get the report; Confirmation report not received from Center or NIB, hence Maharashtra Health The department does not confirm this,” Tope said.
He said that there is no need to panic or bring back the state easing or bringing back the restrictions after the decline in Covid-19 cases.
Panic gripped the city the most on Wednesday when the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai said that out of 230 samples from Mumbai, 228 samples are of Omicron type and one patient is infected with ‘Kappa’ subtype, while the other is from ‘Xe’ subtype. of Covid-19.
However, INSACOG, which conducted the genomic analysis of the sample, told CNN-News18 that the evidence does not suggest that the sample contains the XE variant.
“The FastQ files with respect to the sample, the variant being referred to as ‘XE’, were analyzed in detail by the genomic experts of INSACOG, who inferred that the genomic constitution of this variant is not related to the genomic picture of ‘XE’.” version,” the sources said. INSACOG is a national consortium of 52 institutions involved in genome sequencing of coronavirus.
A top INSACOG official reiterated to CNN-News18 that the XE variant has not been detected in India, adding that the referenced sample is from the period March 2, 2022.
Reacting to the development, the 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”.
The XE version was first revealed in the UK on 19 January. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the XE recombinant is responsible for only a small fraction of cases, but this extremely high transmissibility may mean that it becomes the most dominant strain. near future.
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