In South Korea, for the first time, cases of infection with XE and XM variants of the omicron mutant are detected
South Korean health authorities said on Tuesday that they have confirmed for the first time two cases of the XE strain and one case of the XM strain, which are two strains of the Omicron crown.
And the authorities indicated, according to a report by the South Korean news agency Yonhap, that the only infection with the XE strain was detected in a case imported from the UK on March 27, and another infection was tracked in a local case on the 30th of the same month, while infection with the XM strain was was detected on the 27th of last month, and each infection with two strains of XE and XM was detected in local cases, which does not exclude the possibility of their spread within the country.
Notably, the XE mutant is a strain composed of “PA1” and “PA2” omicrons, while the XM mutant is a strain composed of “PA1.1” and “PA2” omicrons.