A coronavirus modeller is warning a new COVID-19 variant just found in Australia will end up making its way to New Zealand's shores.
It comes after Australian health authorities reported the first case of the new COVID-19 variant XE in an overseas traveller, who tested positive for the subvariant on April 9 after touching down in New South Wales.
On Saturday, traces of XE were also confirmed in wastewater from the suburb of Tullamarine in Melbourne.
University of Auckland computational biologist David Welch warned it won't be long until XE makes its way to New Zealand's shores.
"As long as it continues to circulate in the UK - and it seems like it will do, even at low levels – I'd expect we will," Welch told the NZ Herald.
"There is still quite a bit of movement between here and there."
The new variant, XE, was first detected in the UK on January 19 and more than 1100 cases have been confirmed in England.
XE is recombinant of two other strains, BA.1 - the original strain of Omicron - and BA.2.
On the limited data compiled so far, early estimates suggest the new strain is about 10 percent more transmissible than BA.2, but more data is needed to confirm this.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said less than 200 sequences of the new stains had been collected.
WHO epidemiologists said there were currently no known significant differences between the new strain and the BA.2 strain, which is the dominant strain of COVID-19 in New Zealand.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Health announced there were 13,636 new community cases of COVID-19 and 30 deaths to report - with the data covering the previous two days as there was no update on Good Friday.
