The World Health Organization (WHO) said in their latest weekly epidemiological report that there is a new Covid-19 “variant of concern”, which has been named “XE”.
XE was first reported on 22 March by WHO, who said that it is a recombination of the BA.1 and BA.2 variant.
BA.1 (or Omicron BA.1) is the predecessor of Omicron BA.2 (dubbed the Stealth Omicron), and according to Reuters, BA.1 accounts for most of the infections globally.
However, based on WHO’s latest report on 29 March, the XE variant could be more transmissible than BA.2, with their early estimates indicating a community growth rate advantage of 10 percent as compared to BA.2, although the finding still needs further confirmation.
XE was first detected in the UK on 19 January, with the UK’s Health Services Agency’s 25 March report stating that XE has a weekly growth rate of 9.8%.
As of 25 March, there were 637 cases of XE in England.
However, UK’s HSA said that the new variant accounts for less than 1% of their total sequenced cases and there is insufficient evidence to draw true conclusions about the new variant’s growth, or it’s transmissibility, severity and/or effectiveness of vaccines against it.