The new covet variant has been found in the UK that is now being called XE and it is
said to be more transmissible than the omicron variant all of this coming out
of the world health organization let's go across to my colleague Pandey for
more on this really at a time and everyone thought this was finally behind us now news of a new variant that the who has now confirmed what exactly do we know about this variant how serious is this how concerned does one need to be is there a variant of concerned so Sarah this new variant is called XE it is a recombinant variant which means
That it is a combination of ba1 and B 82 sub-variants of omicron these are both known variants to India a did spread earlier this year when we had a huge third wave
they are sub-variants of omicron B A 2 is currently spreading very fast in parts of western Europe and Asia so it is spreading very fast in multiple places the reason why a
recombinant variant forms are when one person is infected with two variants at
once and then they fuse and create a new variant entirely now what the who is saying is that the
XE variant was detected in uh the UK in January so far 600 cases have been confirmed through sequencing and preliminary studies indicate that it may have a 10 advantage over previous uh the previous variant of omicron DA 2 in transmissibility so it's 10 percent more transmissible than the most transmissible variant we've known
so far making it the most transmissible variant now but although that is concerning who does say that more studies are needed to confirm this because right now XE makes up less than one percent of sequenced and confirmed cases in the UK that's according to the UK government and of course this will make it even less prevalent across the world there's not enough evidence to say uh that this is the most prevalent so far and but this is this does make it a cause for concern this could change as well right now it's not prevalent but this could change knowing how
transmissible it is right now the why is saying that there are no changes in severity
but and until there are any changes it will still be called omicron it will still be categorized under that variant of concern it will not be labeled separately now what this means for India may not be much because we have natural immunity against ba1 and BA 2 because as I said those two variants spread very widely in India when we had
our third wave we are also well vaccinated at this point.
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