WHO Claims – New XE Variant Omicron 10% More Infectious Than BA.2 [TKB Health]

A new mutant variant XE of the corona virus can be 10 percent more infectious than Omicron’s subvariant BA.2. The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed concern about this. XE is a recombinant strain of two sublineages BA.1 and BA.2 of Omicron.

According to the report, its community growth rate of XE has been indicated to be 10 percent higher than that of BA.2. However, data is needed to confirm this. The WHO says that the BA.2 sub-variant has now become the biggest concern for the world, accounting for about 86 percent of the number of sequenced cases. XE strain was first detected in the UK on 19 January and since then more than 600 XE cases have been confirmed.

Britain’s Health Protection Agency (HSA) chief medical adviser Suzanne Hopkins says there is not yet enough evidence to draw conclusions about its infectivity, severity or the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines against them.

The WHO said in the report that it will continue to monitor the dangers of recombinant variants like XE and will update as evidence related to this emerges. Apart from the XE, WHO is also focusing another recombinant variant, the XD, which is a hybrid of Delta and Omicron. Most of its cases have been found in France, Denmark and Belgium.