Is the new covid version XE more severe than Omicron? expert answers

“Variants will come because people are traveling. what we know about Variant (XE) Is it not a matter of concern,” Kang was quoted as saying by the news agency PTI,

“We were worried about BA.2 but it did not cause more serious illness than BA.1. XE does not cause more severe disease than BA.1 or BA.2,” she said.

Kang said that in a vaccinated population, the XE variant is nothing to worry about.

Other health experts have also sought to ease fears centered around XE, saying that despite being around since January, the strain has not led to a surge in cases like Omicron.

Senior epidemiologist Dr Raman Gangakhedekar, former principal scientist of the Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases Division at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said that when there is a recombinant, it is short lived.

“Recombinant events are coincidental events because there are two different types of virus in the body and they develop a recombinant new virus,” Gangakhedekar said.

He said the recombinant event does not increase the fitness of the virus. It is unlikely to be stable because recombinases are rare events.

This comes after reports on Wednesday said that the first case of XE was reported in Maharashtra’s Mumbai.

However, the Union Health Ministry said that the sample, which is being termed as the ‘XE’ variant, was analyzed in detail by the genome experts of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), who have estimated that the genomic constitution This variant is not related to the genomic constitution of the XE type.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a warning against XE, a newer version of Omicron that was first detected in the UK.

This has suggested that the variant may be more transmissible than any COVID strain so far. XE is a combination of recombinants of both subtypes (BA.1 and BA.2) of Omicron.