Srinagar, Apr 12: With India reporting two cases of new XE variant, Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Tuesday said it is unlikely to cause a new wave of Covid-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe new variant is not a cause of concern for us and there is no need to worry about it,\u201d said DAK President and Influenza expert Dr Nisar ul Hassan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFirst detected in United Kingdom in January 2022, XE is a recombinant variant, which means it is a hybrid version of two most prevalent Omicron strains \u2013 BA.1 and BA.2,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Hassan said most of our population has already been exposed to these variants in the third wave which was triggered initially by BA.1 and later by BA.2. Almost all People have antibodies against these sub variants by way of prior infection<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith high vaccination rates and natural immunity, the possibility of having a wave due to this variant is less,\u201d he said<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The DAK President said the fact that there has been no significant increase in the incidence of the XE variant since its detection 3 months ago shows that it is not something to be bothered about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Omicron appeared in November 2021, and it was all over the world in 4-5 weeks and replaced Delta which caused the second wave in April- May last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cXE has not done that. It doesn\u2019t look like we have to worry about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRecombinant variants are not an unusual occurrence, particularly when there are several variants in circulation,\u201d said Dr Nisar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two other recombinant variants \u2013 XD and XF which are combinations of Delta and Omicron have also been identified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said recombinants tend to last for lesser time. Virus fitness does not increase by a recombinant event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFrequent changes in genome structure are part of the natural life course of viruses and there is no need to panic,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Srinagar, Apr 12: With India reporting two cases of new XE variant, Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Tuesday said it is unlikely to cause a new wave of Covid-19. \u201cThe new variant is not a cause of concern for us and there is no need to worry about it,\u201d said DAK President and Influenza expert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}