Cypriot Researchers Identify “Deltacron”, Combination of Delta and Omicron . Variants
A researcher in Cyprus said he had identified a new strain of coronavirus called "Deltacron", which is a combination of the Delta and Omicron variants. So according to a report released by Bloomberg News .
According to Business Insider , Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus, said in an interview with Sigma TV on Friday that he and his research team had identified 25 cases of Deltacron. Even so, he said it was too early to know what the impact of Deltacron would be.
"We will see in the future whether strain this is more pathological or more infectious or whether it will spread widely," he said. But he believes Omicron, which is highly contagious and spreads quickly, will take over.
But a virologist doubts that the 25 cases that Kostrikis and his team discovered were actually caused by the new variant. Dr. Tom Peacock, a virologist at the Imperial Department of Infectious Disease in the UK said in a tweet on Saturday that it could be contamination.
“The Cyprus 'Deltacron' sequences reported by several major media outlets look quite clear as contamination – they do not cluster on the phylogenetic tree and have all of the primary Arctic sequence amplicons from Omicron or vice versa 'backbone ' Delta,” he said.
However, these allegations of contamination were denied by Cypriot scientists. Reported by The Straits Times, Kostrikis believes that his findings are indeed a new type of Covid-19 that combines the characteristics of the Delta and Omicron variants and not contamination.
In an email to Bloomberg Sunday, he said the cases he identified indicated evolutionary pressure on strains ancestral to acquire these mutations and were not the result of a recombination event.
According to Kostrikis, Deltacron infections were higher in patients hospitalized for Covid-19 than in those not treated, thus ruling out the contamination hypothesis. What's more, samples are processed in multiple sequencing procedures in more than one country.
And at least one sequence from Israel stored in a global database shows the genetic characteristics of Deltacron.
"These findings refute undocumented claims that Deltacron was the result of a technical error," said Kostrikis.
Viral genes determine the shape of proteins that perform a number of specific tasks. Omicron and Delta each have mutations in the protein spike that affect their ability to enter human cells, making Omicron more infectious.
Meanwhile, Prof Nick Loman, professor of microbial genomics at the University of Birmingham who studies the coronavirus, said recombinant forms of the virus can emerge when there are several variants of the pathogen circulating.
While the recombinant forms of Delta and Omicron wouldn't be entirely surprising, Loman said the Cypriot findings were more like "technical traces" that emerged in the process of sequencing the viral genome.
On the other hand, Philenews reported Cyprus Health Minister Michael Hadjipantela said on Sunday that this new variant is not a cause for concern. Further details will be provided at a press conference this week. (*)
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