Centre Denies The Presence Of New Coronavirus XE Variant In India

Mumbai (The Quiver) :The Union health ministry denied the presence of XE , new covid variant reported from Mumbai ,on Wednesday .

The ministry clarified that the media reports that recently claimed  a case of the new mutant detected in Mumbai lacks evidence , therefore cannot be considered as true. 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 ministry mentioning the woman who had tested positive for XE Variant said ,” she is a fully vaccinated 50-year-old woman with no comorbidity and asymptomatic”. “She had come from South Africa on February 10 and had no prior travel history. On arrival, she had tested negative for the virus,” it further added.

Previously ,Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation had said that one out of the 230 samples had tested positive for the XE variant in Mumbai under the COVID genome sequencing.

The World Health Organisation had recently warned the whole world regarding a new COVID mutant ‘XE’ . The XE variant was first detected from UK . WHO also stated 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.