\n
MUMBAI, 6 Apr:<\/strong> The first case of XE, a more transmissible COVID-19 variant, was detected in Mumbai on Wednesday, a civic health official said.<\/p>\n A woman who arrived from South Africa in February was found to have this Omicron sub-variant, officials of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said, adding that she was asymptomatic and recovered from the infection.<\/p>\n Besides, a case of the Kappa variant of coronavirus was also detected during a sero survey, a BMC official said, adding the results came in genome sequencing of 376 samples, the 11th batch of testing in the local genome sequencing lab.<\/p>\n Kappa cases have been found in the city earlier too, she added.<\/p>\n As per the sero survey, Omicron was found in 228 out of 230 samples (99.13 per cent) collected from Mumbai. One case was of XE, and another of Kappa.<\/p>\n The genome sequencing of 376 samples was conducted at the municipal Kasturba Hospital’s Genome Sequencing Lab.<\/p>\n The condition of the patients found infected with the new strains of the virus<\/p>\n was not serious, the official said.<\/p>\n A BMC official said the XE variant appears to be 10 per cent more transmissible than the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron. So far, BA.2 was deemed to be the most contagious of all the COVID-19 variants.<\/p>\n The XE variant is a mutation of the BA.1 and BA.2 Omicron strains, referred to as a “recombinant”.<\/p>\n \u00a0As per the initial studies, the XE variant has a growth rate of 9.8 percent over that of BA.2, also known as the stealth variant because of its ability to evade detection.<\/p>\n The World Health Organization has said the latest mutant may be more transmissible than the previous ones.\u00a0 (PTI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MUMBAI, 6 Apr: The first case of XE, a more transmissible COVID-19 variant, was detected in Mumbai on Wednesday, a civic health official said. A woman who arrived from South Africa in February was found to have this Omicron sub-variant, officials of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said, adding that she was asymptomatic and recovered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-188259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-state-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}