{"id":1057695,"date":"2022-04-16T01:05:04","date_gmt":"2022-04-16T01:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/04\/16\/covid-19-subvariant-omicron-xe-emerges-in-australia\/"},"modified":"2022-04-16T01:05:04","modified_gmt":"2022-04-16T01:05:04","slug":"covid-19-subvariant-omicron-xe-emerges-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/04\/16\/covid-19-subvariant-omicron-xe-emerges-in-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 subvariant Omicron XE emerges in Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<style type=\"text\/css\"><![CDATA[.noscroll{overflow:hidden;}@keyframes tonext{75%{left:0;}95%{left:100%;}98%{left:100%;}99%{left:0;}}@keyframes tostart{75%{left:0;}95%{left:-300%;}98%{left:-300%;}99%{left:0;}}@keyframes snap{96%{scroll-snap-align:center;}97%{scroll-snap-align:none;}99%{scroll-snap-align:none;}100%{scroll-snap-align:center;}}@media screen and (min-width:479px){.carousel-container{z-index:999999998 !important;}.carousel-container-bg{z-index:999999998 !important;}.slide-caption{color:#fff;height:20%;margin:auto;max-width:745px;padding:15px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0;right:0;left:0;overflow:auto;background:#000000;}}@media screen and (max-width:478px){.carousel-container{z-index:9999998 !important;}.carousel-container-bg{z-index:9999998 !important;}.slide-caption{color:#fff;height:150px;margin:auto;margin-bottom:65px;max-width:745px;padding:15px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0;right:0;left:0;overflow:auto;background:#000000;}}.carousel-container{display:none;padding:0;position:fixed;top:0;bottom:0;left:0;right:0;}.carousel-container-bg{display:none;padding:0;background:#000;opacity:0.95; 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color:#666666; font-size:14px;}.slide-image-container{position:relative; max-height:455px; width:100%; text-align:center; overflow:hidden;}.slide-image-container img{width:100%; max-height:455px; aspect-ratio:attr(width) \/ attr(height); height:auto;}]]><\/style>\n<div class=\"slide-image-container\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 100%;\" width=\"645\" height=\"429\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/COVID-19-subvariant-Omicron-XE-emerges-in-Australia.jpg\" title=\"COVID-19 subvariant Omicron XE emerges in Australia\" alt=\"COVID-19 subvariant Omicron XE emerges in Australia\"\/>\n<\/div>\n<p>Health workers attend a COVID-19 testing site in Brisbane, Australia, in January. Photo by Jono Searle\/EPA-EFE<\/p>\n<p><style type=\"text\/css\"><![CDATA[\n\t\t\tarticle ul\tli { list-style: disc; padding: 5px 0; }\n\t\t]]><\/style>\n<article itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p><span class=\"story_dl\">April 15 (UPI) &#8212;<\/span> A new COVID-19 subvariant known as Omicron XE has emerged in Australia, officials confirmed Friday.<\/p>\n<p>New South Wales health authorities said that the first reported case was confirmed when a traveler returned from overseas last week.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<p>XE is a combination of previous variants, BA.1 and BA.2, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of the World Health Organization said in a YouTube video this week about the development. <\/p>\n<p><emb><\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"mvAIaLvBhMY\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Q&amp;A about the COVID-19 variant XE\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mvAIaLvBhMY?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><\/emb>\n<\/p>\n<p>Australian authorities on Monday lifted restrictions on travelers that required mandatory negative COVID-19 tests prior to arriving in the country.\n<\/p>\n<p>In mid-January, Britain became the first country to detect XE and has since recorded more than 1,000 cases. XE has also shown up Thailand, Canada, Israel and India.<\/p>\n<p>Japan said Tuesday that it also confirmed its first XE case.<\/p>\n<p>The United States has not officially reported any XE cases as of Friday.\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We may be done with the virus, but the virus isn&#8217;t done with us,&#8221; public health expert Michael T. Osterholm said this week. &#8220;It is clear with the emergence of new variants that this virus isn&#8217;t going to go away and become dormant anytime soon.&#8221;\n<\/p>\n<p>Osterholm is a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and a former adviser to the Biden administration.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this month, one expert said there&#8217;s too much &#8220;hype&#8221; attached to the new variants.\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I find it very disappointing and unhelpful how much people are hyping these variants,&#8221; Jeremy Kamil, associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport, said. &#8220;They are scientifically interesting but remain largely a curiosity. &#8220;These are not at all likely to pose a special or unique threat and we should not treat them as if they do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration gave emergency use authorization for the first COVID-19 test by a breathalyzer.\n<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Health workers attend a COVID-19 testing site in Brisbane, Australia, in January. Photo by Jono Searle\/EPA-EFE April 15 (UPI) &#8212; A new COVID-19 subvariant known as Omicron XE has emerged in Australia, officials confirmed Friday. New South Wales health authorities said that the first reported case was confirmed when a traveler returned from overseas last [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1057696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[315,261,4548,989,5354],"class_list":["post-1057695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-australia","tag-covid19","tag-emerges","tag-omicron","tag-subvariant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1057695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1057695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1057695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1057695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}