A 67-year-old Mumbai man, who was on a social visit to Vadodara, tested positive for XE sub-variant of Covid’s Omicron strain which is known for its fast transmission. Earlier, a woman from Mumbai was claimed to be India’s first case of XE sub-variant but the Union health ministry said that the same does not correlate with the genomic picture of XE variant.
Vadodara health officials said the Mumbai man had come with three others to the city by air on a personal visit on March 11. He checked into a high-end hotel and was tested for Covid after reporting fever on March 12. For the testing purpose, he had given the address of a relative staying in a posh residential society in New Alkapuri.
Manoj Aggarwal, ACS (health), said that the senior citizen went back to Mumbai after the test. “He had tested positive for Covid but did not develop any severe symptoms,” he said. When his sample was sent for genomic sequencing at Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre (GBRC), it tested positive for the XE sub-variant some days ago,” he said. The West Bengal-based National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG) has also confirmed the XE report, Aggarwal added.
“It’s surely the first case of XE sub-variant reported in Gujarat where the patient is not a resident of Gujarat. I cannot comment on whether it's the country's first case, as Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) can provide this information,” said Aggarwal. He said that the man had left for Mumbai and was contacted after the XE positive report. He is found to be stable after recovery.
The state health department officials said that four people were in close contact with the Mumbai man locally and all of them have tested negative. “Further sampling would be carried out based on the contact history,” said an official.
