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XE variant of coronavirus “detected” in Gujarat
The Hindu
“From what we see this fits the definition of XE more than the Mumbai one,” says highly placed official
On a day the Centre expanded the availability of precaution doses, the XE variant of coronavirus, a more infectious but not more severe than the Omicron variety, has been found in Gujarat, a highly placed official confirmed to The Hindu.
This week, Mumbai civic officials reported a case of the XE variant from a sample isolated in February, but officials at the Indian Sarscov2 Genome Consortium (INSACOG), a network of labs that tracks sequences, and the Union Health Ministry, are yet to confirm if it is an XE variant.
“Samples from Gujarat have been sent to NCDC, but from what we see this fits the definition of XE more than the Mumbai one,” the person cited earlier said on condition of anonymity.
An INSACOG laboratory in Gujarat, the Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre (GBRC), has reportedly confirmed the variant. The Hindu reached out to the GBRC lab head, Madhavi Joshi, who declined to comment.
The Hindu could not glean additional details on the person from Gujarat who has tested positive for the XE.
While several variants of the coronavirus have emerged in the last two years because of mutations, recombination variants occur when, in extremely rare situations, two different lineages of the virus co-infect the same cell in the host and exchange fragments of their individual genomes. This generates a descendent variant having mutations that occurred in both the original lineages of the virus. The XE variant, for instance, is a recombinant of the BA.1 and BA.2 subtypes of the Omicron variant.
While the current XE variant has generated public concern because the World Health Organisation has signalled its potential for increased infectivity, there have been other recombinants of the Sarscov2 that have been identified by genome scientists. There are three hybrid or recombinant viruses in total that have been detected so far. These are XD, XE and XF, of which XD and XF are a combination of the Delta and Omicron variants.
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When fed into Latin, pusilla comes out denoting “very small”. The Baillon’s crake can be missed in the field, when it is at a distance, as the magnification of the human eye is woefully short of what it takes to pick up this tiny creature. The other factor is the Baillon’s crake’s predisposition to present less of itself: it moves about furtively and slides into the reeds at the slightest suspicion of being noticed. But if you are keen on observing the Baillon’s crake or the ruddy breasted crake in the field, in Chennai, this would be the best time to put in efforts towards that end. These birds live amidst reeds, the bulrushes, which are likely to lose their density now as they would shrivel and go brown, leaving wide gaps, thereby reducing the cover for these tiddly birds to stay inscrutable.