Deltacron - A Potential Hybrid Of Delta And Omicron Found In Cyprus Leaves Scientists Divided
A new strain named Deltacron has reportedly been found in Cyprus. The new strain is said to be a hybrid of both Delta and Omicron. The strain has omicron-like genetic signatures within the delta genomes.
At a time when the world is battling another wave of COVID-19, caused by the Omicron variant, which has now become the predominant strain, a new strain has reportedly been found in Cyprus.
The new strain named Deltacron is said to be a hybrid of both Delta and Omicron.
According to Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus and head of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology, the newly identified strain has omicron-like genetic signatures within the delta genomes.
Representational Image
Kostrikis and his team have identified 25 such cases and the statistical analysis shows that the relative frequency of the combined infection is higher among patients hospitalized due to Covid-19 as compared to non-hospitalized patients. The sequences of the 25 Deltacron cases were sent to GISAID, the international database that tracks changes in the virus, on January 7.
It is too early to say that if Deltacron is a new strain or if it will become more dominant than Omicron.
Many also have pointed out that it was normal for the virus to mutate, even within the strain.
AFP
While the Delta strain was the dominant strain in India, it had undergone several minor mutations and one of them was dubbed as Delta plus.
Other scientists pointed out that Deltacron is not a new strain, but a possible case of contamination.
"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" Virologist Tom Peacock said.
Small update: 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.
¡ª Tom Peacock (@PeacockFlu) January 8, 2022
"One person having two viral infections is nothing earth-shattering" infectious disease expert Dr. Faheem Younus said.
Fear Mongering
¡ª Faheem Younus, MD (@FaheemYounus) January 9, 2022
Media generated words like *Deltacron* and *Florona* scare ppl of a threat that isn¡¯t there
One person having two viral infections is nothing earth shattering
How sick some souls must be to turn a pandemic into business
Earlier, Ravindra Gupta, Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases (CITIID), had said that Omicron, which has so far been dubbed as mild was an ¡°evolutionary mistake¡±.
AFP
"There is this assumption that viruses become more benign over time but that's not what's happening here because those are long-term evolutionary trends," Prof. Gupta told PTI.
¡°SARS-CoV-2 is transmitting very efficiently so it doesn't have any reason to become milder, especially in the era of vaccination with plenty of susceptible hosts. So I think it¡¯s an evolutionary mistake. It's not something intentional that the virus is trying to do to change its biology,¡± he said.
For more on news and current affairs from around the world, please visit Indiatimes News.
Bobins Abraham is the Assistant News Editor at Indiatimes. He has more than twelve years of experience in TV and digital journalism. An avid student of history and geopolitics, he is a conservationist and environmentalist at heart. He writes on environment, sustainability, human-animal conflict and more.
Read More
