New Deli: The Union Health Ministry has refuted claims that India has reported its first case of the Covid-19 variant, XE, in Mumbai. The rebuttal came shortly after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said that the results of the 11th batch of next generation genome sequencing conducted by it on 230 Covid-19 positive patients had found one case of Omicron’s new sub-variant, XE.
The patient, a 50-year-old woman, is fully vaccinated against the virus and has shown no symptoms so far, Mumbai’s civic body Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said on Wednesday. She also suffers from no comorbidities, he said.
However, Health Ministry denied the presence of the XE variant in the patient’s sample. ‘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,’ official sources reportedly said.
The XE variant has raised concerns across the globe as it is supposed to be more transmissible than all the other variants so far.
Meanwhile, World Health Organisation’s chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan has said new Covid-19 variants were unlikely to have a Delta-like impact in India in view of the country’s high vaccination rate, especially among the vulnerable population.