XE Variant: Not Dangerous, No Need To Panic, Odisha Govt Tells People

Bhubaneswar: A day after the Union Health Ministry denied that India’s first case of COVID-19’s XE variant had been detected in Maharashtra, the Odisha government on Thursday reassured people and said there was no need to panic.

“The XE variant is spreading from the UK. Though highly transmissible, it’s not dangerous. There is no need to panic. Patients detected with the variant outside the country are asymptomatic. We are already carrying out genetic studies of this sub-variant. The Centre has not issued any guidelines yet,” said Dr Bijay Kumar Mohapatra, Director, Health Services.

Dr Ajit Mohanty, Special Secretary in the state Health Department, too said there was no need to panic and that patients detected with the variant so far were all asymptomatic. Odisha is prepared in case patients are detected with the XE variant, he added.

On Wednesday, authorities in Mumbai said that one out of 230 samples had tested positive for the XE variant.

But the Health Ministry later said that FastQ files of the sample were analysed by genomic experts at INSACOG, who concluded that the genomic map of the sample did not correlate with the ‘XE’ variant.