Deltacron – combination of Omicron and Delta found in Cyprus

Amid rising Omicron concerns, a new Covid-19 strain named ‘Deltacron’ has been found in Cyprus. This strain is a combination of Delta and Omicron, the Covid-19 variants.

Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus has talked about Deltacron in an interview with Sigma TV. The new Deltacron strain was found in the combination of Omicron and Delta variants of Covid-19, and the discovery was named Delta due to the Omicron-like genetic signatures within the Delta genomes, Kostrikis said in the interview. Kostrikis and his team have identified 25 such cases.

Leondios Kostrikis said, “We will see in the future if this strain is more pathological or more contagious or if it will prevail over delta and omicron”.

Kostrikis’ personal view was this strain will also be displaced by the highly contagious Omicron variant. 25 cases have been reported so far, according to Bloomberg.

Expert views

Tom Peacock, virologist, has tweeted that, “the Cypriot ‘Deltacron’ sequences reported by several large media outlets look to be quite clearly contamination - they do not cluster on a phylogenetic tree and have a whole Artic primer sequencing amplicon of Omicron in an otherwise Delta backbone”.

Eric Topol, physician-scientist has tweeted that, “Deltacron” is a scariant. One less thing to worry about.”

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has not made any official announcement on the Deltacron variant.

Earlier, other than Omicron, IHU variant was also identified. Israel also reported Flurona, which is a combination of Covid-19 and flu.

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