INSACOG, India’s genomics consortium, on Wednesday claimed that the samples detected in Mumbai, which is said to have the XE strain of Covid-19, do not suggest the presence of the variant after genomic sequencing of the case. This comes soon after Mumbai authorities said that the city has reported India’s first case of the XE variant, which is a mutation of the strains of the Omicron variant and touted to be highly transmissible.
Issuing a press release, the Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation said of the 230 samples from Mumbai, 228 samples are of the Omicron variant and one patient is affected by the ‘Kapa’ subtype, while the other is by the ‘XE’ subtype of Covid-19.
Sources in the INSACOG, which conducted the genomic analysis of the sample, told CNN-News18 that evidence does not suggest that the sample has the XE variant.
“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,” the sources said. INSACOG is a national consortium of 52 institutions involved in genome sequencing of the coronavirus.
A top official at INSACOG reiterated to CNN-News18 that XE Variant is not detected in India, adding that the referred sample belongs to the period of March 2, 2022.
Reacting to the development, BMC said that at Wednesday’s INSACOG meeting, “we have been asked to send the sequencing data to NIBMG (National Institute of Biomedical Genomics) for further analysis to confirm the XE variant”.
XE variant was first detected in the UK on January 19. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the XE recombinant only accounts for a small fraction of the cases, but its extremely high transmissibility could mean that it becomes the most dominant strain in the near future.
WHAT THE MUMBAI CIVIC BODY SAID
In a statement, Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation said that of the 230 Covid-infected patients, one was infected with the XE strain and another with the Kapa variant. Twenty-one patients had to be hospitalised, but none required oxygen support. The genome sequencing of the total 376 samples was conducted at the municipal Kasturba Hospital’s Genome Sequencing Lab in Mumbai.