The United Kingdom has detected 637 cases of a new variant of the coronavirus named XE, which is a mixture of two sub-variants of Omicron, the UK Health Safety Agency (UKHSA) said.
According to preliminary data, the prevalence of XE is 9.8 percent. greater than in the case of the Omicron sub-variable marked with BA.2, i.e. the invisible sub-variable of Omicron, which in turn propagates slightly faster than the original BA.1. The number of cases reported by UKHSA is for England only and as of March 22nd.
However, as noted in an interview with The Sun, Prof. Susan Hopkins, senior medical advisor at UKHSA, such variants – called recombinants, a combination of the other two – tend to go away “relatively quickly”. “To date, there is not enough evidence to draw conclusions about transmission capacity, disease severity, or vaccine efficacy,” she said.
Recombinant XE has already been detected in Thailand and New Zealand. The World Health Organization, when reporting on this, also indicated that it was about 10 percent higher. Prevalence rate, provided this requires further research.
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