A leading immunology expert has shared his concerns after cases of the latest Covid strain were reported in Ireland.
Professor of Immunology at Trinity College Dublin Kingston Mills says the Omicron XE variant may be 10 to 20% more transmissible than the Omicron BA.2 virus.
It comes after one case of the new 'hybrid' strain of the BA.1 and BA.2 variants has been reported in Ireland.
READ MORE: Key symptoms to watch for as new Covid variant 'Omicron XE' arrives in Ireland
The Department of Health confirmed that as of April 8, one case associated with Omicron XE had been identified here.
In Northern Ireland, a "small number" of cases of the new variant have been discovered to date.
Professor Mills shared his "two big worries" about the latest coronavirus mutation and the risk it poses due to its enhanced transmissibility.
"XE is what’s called a recombinant virus between BA.1 and BA.2, so we had Omicron and that was a new variant that emerged in December," he told RTE's Morning Ireland on Monday.
"Then there was a sub-variant of that called BA.2 which is now known as the dominant variant in Ireland and a lot of European countries.
"When a person gets infected with two different viruses, those viruses can recombine to give a kind of hybrid virus, which is a mixture of the genome of one and the other.
"So what you have with Omicron XE is that bits of the BA.1 virus and a bit of the BA.2 to make up the XE, and the spike protein is from the BA.2 version and some of the internal proteins are from BA.1.
"There is a suggestion from data in the UK, in the UK they've had over 1,000 cases of this XE variant, and there's a suggestion that it may be more transmissible than BA.2 by about 10 or 20%."
The Trinity Professor added that there is still a "significant number" of Covid cases in Ireland every day, and while the Omicron XE variant is "reasonably mild in healthy people" he said "two big worries" remain.
"One that the vulnerable and the older and people get infected, it can still be a very severe disease, especially if they haven’t been vaccinated," Prof Mills said.
"The second worry is the other variants arising, such as this XE.
"It might not be any worse than BA.2 or Omicron but in India right now, there are a series of new variants emerging.
"In India, the Covid pandemic is out of control again and there were six million cases in April already and there's a concern that there are a lot of new variants emerging.
"I think we’ll have to watch that carefully and not get complacent about the fact that this thing is completely over.
"I’m not trying to be scaremongering but I'm just saying we need to be prepared if we do see a variant that completely evades immunity with the vaccine.
"That's the big concern, the current vaccine prevents severe disease with Omicron BA.2 and probably with this XE as well, but if we got another variant that completely evaded it, we would be back to square one."
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