Expert: COVID-19 Vaccine Not Recommended To Be Tested Against Variant XE

JAKARTA - The expert who is also the former Head of the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology, Prof. Amin Soebandrio, said that there is currently no recommendation for testing the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine for the latest XE variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2.

"The XE variant has not yet spread widely, so there is no recommendation for specific vaccine efficacy testing", said Amin, who is also a professor at the Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia (FK UI).

According to him, if it turns out that the infectious ability of the XE variant such as Omicron, then it is possible that all vaccines need to be tested

He said that he still needed to wait for the results of further research regarding the characteristics of XE and its transmission potential.

"Currently, research is still ongoing to know more about the XE variant", said Amin Soebandrio.

Contacted separately, the Head of the Health Research Organization of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Ni Luh P Indi Dharmayanti, said the BRIN Merah Putih vaccine was developed on several platforms and is still in progress.

To find out the efficacy of the Merah Putih vaccine against the new XE variant, she said, further research should be done.

At BRIN, there are three research platforms for and development of Merah Putih vaccine seeds for COVID-19, consisting of one research at the Genetic Engineering Research Center, and two researchers at the Eijkman Molecular Biology Research Center (PRBME) of BRIN, with varying progress.

The BRIN Genetic Engineering Research Center is conducting research for the development of recombinant protein-based vaccine seeds using mammalian cells. In vitro tests have been carried out, and will soon proceed to in vivo tests.

Meanwhile, PRBME develops vaccine seeds based on recombinant protein using yeast or yeast cells. From these research activities, vaccine seeds have been produced and submitted to industrial partner PT Bio Farma for further development.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says preliminary estimates suggest that the XE variant is 10 percent more infectious than BA.2 (Omicron). However, these findings require further confirmation.

According to the UK Health Safety Agency, the XE variant is a "recombinant" which is a mutation of the BA.1 and BA.2 Omicron strains. Recombinant mutations arise when a patient is infected with several variants of the virus that causes COVID-19.

On April 4, 2022, Thailand reported its first case of the XE variant. The variant was first detected on January 19, 2022, and is already widely found in the UK.