Health Ministry busts viral WhatsApp message about Covid XBB variant as ‘fake’, ‘misleading’

#FakeNews

This message is circulating in some Whatsapp groups regarding XBB variant of #COVID19.

The message is #FAKE and #MISLEADING. pic.twitter.com/LAgnaZjCCi

— Ministry of Health (@MoHFW_INDIA) December 22, 2022

The viral message started by saying that everyone is advised to wear a mask “because the new variant of the COVID-Omicron XBB coronavirus is different, deadly and not easy to detect correctly”.

It added that the symptoms of this variant exclude cough and fever and have only a limited number of others, namely joint pain, headache, pain in the neck, upper back pain, pneumonia and lack of appetite.

Further, the message read, “COVID-Omicron XBB is 5 times more virulent than the Delta variant and has a higher mortality rate than it. It takes less time for the condition to reach extreme severity and sometimes there are no obvious symptoms.”

“This strain of the virus is not found in the nasopharyngeal region and directly affects the lungs for a relatively short period of time. Several patients diagnosed with Covid-Omicron XBB were classified as afebrile and pain-free, but x-rays showed mild chest pneumonia. Nasal swab tests are often negative for Covid-Omicron XBB, and cases of false negative nasopharyngeal tests are increasing,” it added.

As such, it claimed that this variant can “spread in the community and directly infect the lungs, causing viral pneumonia, which, in turn, causes acute respiratory distress”.

Busting these viral claims, Dr Shuchin Bajaj, Founder and Director, Ujala Cygnus Group of Hospitals, told indianexpress.com, “There’s no evidence to support that this variant is more deadly and virulent than the Delta variant. The current data doesn’t suggest that XBB is more deadly than Omicron which, in turn, is much less lethal than the Delta variant.”

He explained that the XBB variant is a hybrid between the two descendants of the BA.2 subvariant of the Omicron variant. “It has led to a surge in hospitalisation in Singapore and other countries. However, we have no evidence to suggest there’s a significant difference between it and its parent lineage of Omicron. Early analysis suggests that this variant is more transmissible than other subvariants of Omicron but has less severity,” he said.

Since their emergence, the Omicron variants are known for their immune evasion which helps them transmit more readily but are less virulent than the previous versions, Dr Bajaj said.

Agreeing, Dr Vivek Verma, Senior Consultant, Dept. of Pulmonology, Max Super Speciality Hospital, Dehradun said, “As per WHO, there is no data to support that XBB is more serious than Omicron. WHO-TAGVE does not feel that overall XBB diverge sufficiently from omicron with additional escape mutations in terms of public health response to warrant the designation of a new variant of concern. However, situations will be reassessed regularly.”

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