Need to reconfirm: Centre's research body after Mumbai 'detects' India's first XE variant

The development comes amid sources in the Union Health Ministry disagreeing with the Mumbai civic body that the highly transmissible XE variant of coronavirus has been detected in India.

Hours after Mumbai civic body BMC announced India’s first case of the XE variant of coronavirus and central government sources disagreed with the findings, top officials of the Centre’s research body INSACOG said the case will have to be re-examined.

“There is a need to reconfirm the case and find out whether the sample is infected with the “recombinant” variant or multiple exposure to the virus variants. We will run genome sequencing again to check for multiple exposures,” INSACOG sources told India Today TV.

“We will need to isolate this virus subtype and check for reconfirmed results,” they added.

As per the BMC, it is the first case of the country’s XE variant. However, the sample will be sent to the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG) for further analysis to confirm the new variant.

This evening, the BMC said that a 50-year-old woman, who has been fully vaccinated against coronavirus and has shown no symptoms so far, is India’s first case of the new variant, which, according to the World Health Organization, is 10 times more transmissible than Omicron. The patient also suffers from no comorbidities, the BMC said.

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However, sources in the Health Ministry denied the presence of the XE variant in the patient's sample.