"Best Time To Get Covid...": Top Scientist Dismisses Fears For Children
NDTV
India's top biomedical scientist Dr Gagandeep Kang said it is not known whether the XE variant is driving the rise in cases
India's overall COVID-19 cases remain low, though there has been an uptick in cases in the last week in several cities. Delhi, for example, is reporting rising COVID-19 cases among children in schools, which is a worrying sign.
India's top biomedical scientist Dr Gagandeep Kang said it is not known whether the XE variant is driving the rise in cases. "We don't necessarily know that all of the case that are being reported are of the XE variant unless we sequence them all," Dr Kang told NDTV today. "...It is only when we have all the pieces of the picture we can interpret data. People's data alone isn't sufficient," she said.
On what the world knows about the XE variant, Dr Kang said, "XE is a derivative of Omicron. In terms of what we know about Omicron, this is a virus that replicates more on the upper respiratory tract than in the lower respiratory tract, so the symptoms you would expect to see would be infection of the upper respiratory tract by and large, fever, restlessness, but not the kind of severe disease that put people to hospitals earlier."
"I think focussing on the symptoms and expecting the symptoms to tell us which variant we have is often a fallacy, even though it is quite frequently what is highlighted in the media. What you really need is clinical demographic information in addition to the sequence data that tell you which variant it is," Dr Kang said.
