XE variant threat as public forgo mask rule in state
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: April 08, 2022 -

Detection of India's first case of Coronavirus variant XE in Mumbai on Wednesday is indeed a cause of concern for the country and the state of Manipur as prevalence of the highly transmissible variant came at a time when the government is gradually lifting prohibitions imposed to contain spread of the contagion and the public are getting visibly complacent.

The only respite vis-a-vis detection of the newer variant is that it is not as fatal as the earlier variants, the union home ministry is yet to confirm the Mumbai case and patients with the new variant don't show any severe symptoms.

However, it is the recent warning issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that the new mutant may be more transmissible than any strain of Covid-19 that the public should be wary about.

As has been widely reported, the patient with XE variant had foreign travel history thereby ringing out the message that there is no room for leniency for the state's health department authorities as they are the ones who shall have to chalk up effective plans to prevent import of the viral disease, which has caused irreparable damage to life and livelihood of all sections of the society.

Taking into account of the fact that the newer mutants detected and analysed so far across the world are more transmissible than any previous strain of COVID-19, it is imperative that the existing preventive measures be periodically reviewed to minimise administrative lapses, if any, and to enable the general population sustain the livelihood activities.

For the record, the new strain was first detected in the United Kingdom on January 19 and the number of XE cases in Britain has reached 637 so far.

Another worrisome aspect of the Omicron strains from the global context is that even South Korea, which has robust healthcare system, and China known for its stringent Covid-19 containment measures are currently struggling to tame the disease.

Thus, it could be safely stated that as and when any of the highly transmissible variants gets imported into a state like Manipur, where the healthcare facilities are nothing extraordinary, then nobody would be safe.

Moreover, with only 50.1 per cent of the state's 23-lakh plus population fully vaccinated till date and all the educational institutions resuming physical classes, the possibility of the relatively less severe Omicron variants mutating, spreading rapidly and turning grim cannot be ruled out for healthcare.

In such a situation, healthcare workers cannot guarantee round-the-clock attention to all the patients as was evident during the two earlier waves.

As the state has stopped penalising people for not wearing masks in view of the Covid cases continuing to drop, detection of the XE variant in distant Mumbai would hopefully make the citizens aware that masking up is the easiest means of staying safe from the contagious disease.

It is also wished that the healthcare experts remind the public that it is too early to completely do away with the preventive restriction and people acknowledge and follow the existing guidelines to voluntarily mask up in order to stay protected from the coronavirus and all other contagious diseases.