Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on April 7 denied confirmation of the new ‘XE’ variant of Covid-19 in India and said that as there is no confirmatory report from Centre or National Institute of Biologicals (NIB), so Maharashtra's Health Department doesn't confirm it. “The Health Department has not arrived on any confirmation on the XE variant as there's no National Institute of Biologicals report yet. There is no need to panic,” said Maharashtra Health Minister. “As per information, the XE variant is 10 per cent more infectious than the Omicron variant which is like flu. We will talk more about it in detail after getting a report,” said Rajesh Tope.