Mumbai Covid Patient’s Sample Test Rules Out Any Xe Variant

The National Institute of Biomedical Genomics based in Kolkata said it was not the XE variant, Dr N.K. Arora, chairman, National Immunization Technical Advisory Group, and co-chair of INSACOG, said in an interview.

Samples of a 50-year-old covid patient who returned from South Africa in February were sent to many INSACOG labs to validate the presence of the XE variant. “When BMC claimed that the XE variant was detected in Mumbai, it looked suspicious to us. We alerted all our channels. As when new mutants are described, at least three layers of testing are done. Tests conducted by National Institute of Biomedical Genomics confirmed that it was the XM or XJ variant from X-series of Omicron,” he said. The lab submitted its report with INSACOG recently, Arora said.

INASCOG followed a data triangulation strategy to reconfirm the case claimed by BMC on a fast-track basis within 24-48 hours.

Samples were sent to National Institute of Virology and National Institute of Biomedical Genomics for quality assurance tests by experts at three levels.

The Omicron strain, which is spreading across the world, has many sub-lineages, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The XE variant is a recombinant of BA.1 and BA.2 sub-lineages.

“The Omicron variant has four sub-types, BA.1, BA.2, BA.3 and BA.4. Of these BA.1 & BA.2 are the pre-dominant strains in India. The basic characteristics of these two sub-types is that they have a lot of breakpoints as part of the natural biological phenomena. When they broke, they started to circulate and randomly met with each other, as a result, whole X-series of variants originated, which is the combination of BA.1 & BA.2. Hence, the XE variant is one of those recombinants,” Arora explained.

Earlier, WHO pointed out that the XE variant has a growth advantage of 10%.

Arora also said that so far there is no confirmed case of XE variant in India.