Gujarat detects XE variant of coronavirus in 67-year-old Mumbai resident

In what could be the first such case in the country, XE variant of coronavirus, which is more infectious than the Omicron variant, has now been reported in Gujarat.

According to state health department sources, a 67-year-old man from Mumbai was found to be carrying the variant after a private Covid testing done during his stay in Vadodara was sent for genome sequencing to Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre (GBRC).

"We have alerted the Maharashtra government since the infected person soon returned to Mumbai on March 14. Three other persons in Gujarat who came in contact with him were tested but found negative and without the variant," a senior state health department official told Business Standard.

An Indian Sarscov2 Genome Consortium (INSACOG) laboratory in Gujarat, GBRC has now sent the samples to the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), it has been learnt.

Confirming the development, GBRC director C G Joshi said that the sequencing was also sent to another INSACOG laboratory National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in West Bengal after which the XE variant was confirmed.

The XE variant case in Gujarat has been found after Mumbai civic officials reported a case of the new variant although the same is yet to be confirmed by INSACOG or the union health ministry at the Centre.

In the case of Gujarat, the person had travelled from Mumbai to Vadodara on March 12 and had gotten himself tested after developing fever on March 13 and had returned to Mumbai the following day.

More infectious than Omicron, but not as severe, the new XE variant has so far seen over 500 cases globally. A recombinant of the BA.1 and BA.2 subtypes of the Omicron variant, the XE variant attracted global concern after the World Health Organisation (WHO) drew attention to its potential for increased infectiousness.