MAS nakakahawa at mabagsik ang bagong COVID -19 variant na “Omicron XE” na unang na-detect sa UK.
Ayon kay infectious disease specialist Dr. Rontgene Solante, chief ng Adult Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine Unit sa San Lazaro Hospital ,ang “omicron XE” variant ay kumbinasyon ng BA.1, ang original strain ng omicron, at BA.2 o sub-variant ng omicron.
“When you have a combination of heavily mutated variant of concern, then you would expect that this recombinant omicron XE will be more transmissible than BA.1 and BA.2, and that will have implications, especially for now that a lot of the countries are already downgrading their alert level,” ayon kay Solante.
Ayon sa World Health Organization (WHO), 10% itong mas nakakahawa kumpara sa BA.2, na napaulat sa Thailand.
Ayon kay Solante ,konti pa lamang ang impormasyon nakikuha sa XE.
“The only information is that it’s more highly transmissible, more transmissible than the BA.2,” ani Solante, na miyembro rin ng government’s vaccine expert panel.
“But the characteristic in terms of how it will evade our vaccines. Will it cause severe infection? Will it cause more people to be hospitalized? That we should know and we should be monitoring in the next days,” dagdag ni Solante.
Nakikipag-ugnayan na umano ang Department of Health(DOH) sa United Nation health agency sa pagsasagawa ng genomic surveillance sa XE variant.
Inihayag ni Solante na upang maiwasan ang potensiyal na impeksiyon ,ang publiko ay dapat na istriktong sundin ang minimum public health standards at magpa- booster shot.
Hinikayat rin ni Solante ang publiko na kaagad magpa-swab kapag nakaranas ng sintomas. (Jaymel Manuel)
