India’s first case of the XE variant of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) was reported from Mumbai on Wednesday.
Results of the 11th genome sequencing declared by the city civic body Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC,) found one sample positive for XE variant and another for Kappa variant.The individual who tested positive for the XE variant was a 50-year-old women with no comorbidity and asymptomatic, BMC officials said. She had come from South Africa on February 10 and had no prior travel history. On arrival, she had tested negative for the virus. On March 2, in a routine test at Suburban diagnostics, she was found infected and was quarantined in a room in Taj Lands End. Officials said another test was done on the next day by Spice Health, where she tested negative (March 3, 2022).
The BMC had tested 230 samples which 99.13 per cent or 228 samples tested positive for the Omicron strain that had driven the spread of the virus earlier this year across the country.
A study in UK, which is facing a fresh wave of infections, suggested that while there were signs of “community transmission” of XE in England, it remained less than one per cent of the totally sequenced coronavirus cases.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) was studying XE — a mutation of the BA.1 and BA.2 Omicron strains — and as of March 22, as many as 637 XE cases had been detected in England, according to official figures.
