Deltacron EXPLAINED: A New Variant or a Lab Error?

Deltacron EXPLAINED: After specialists dismissed the finding as to the result of laboratory samples becoming contaminated, a scientist insists his findings are accurate. He claims a new Covid variant combines the traits of Delta and Omicron.

What Has Been Detected In Cyrpus?

The data has been submitted to the GISAID global database by Dr. Leonidos Kostrikis, a biologist at the University of Cyprus. Kostrikis and his colleagues have identified 25 cases of the Deltacron variant, which has led to hospitalization in 11 cases.

After Dr. Kostrikis’ announcement trended on social media over the weekend, several experts rejected his claims.

According to Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious diseases researcher at the World Health Organization, “Deltacron is not real and is likely the result of sequencing errors (lab contamination of Omicron sequence fragments in a Delta sample).”

Dr. Tom Peacock, an Imperial College London professor, was also responding to the scare.

In addition to the Omicron primer sequencing amplicon in a Delta backbone, the Cypriot Deltacron sequences reported by several large media outlets do not cluster on phylogenetic trees.

Despite decades of Delta sequences with strange mutations in amplicon 72 (for example, Delta + Mu NTD insertion), they always show this non-monophyletic pattern and are almost always more easily explained by a primer issue exacerbating very low levels of contamination.”

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What Have Experts Said?

The global health expert Boghuma Kabisen Titanji also tweeted that Deltacron was probably the result of sample contamination, but he did note: “With SARSCoV2 transmission levels at all-time highs globally, it is likely that recombination is occurring and may occur at a level where we start tracking these events more frequently.”. Does this lead to more concerning variants? Nobody knows whether that is possible or not.”

The best thing we can do in addition to worrying and coining variant names that sound like villains from Transformers is to make sure that vaccines are widely available and combine vaccination with other strategies that limit the threat of the disease spreading.

Must Read: Deltacron – Cyprus Identifies Combined ‘Deltacron’ COVID Strain

Okay people let’s make this a teachable moment, there is no such thing as #Deltacron (Just like there is no such thing as #Flurona) #Omicron and #Delta did NOT form a super variant

This is likely sequencing artifact (lab contamination of Omicron fragments in a Delta specimen) https://t.co/DDvM24bt9g

— Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA (@KrutikaKuppalli) January 9, 2022

Must Read: Deltacron: Learn All About A New Delta-Omicron Mutation Found In Cyprus

The medical expert has since reaffirmed his position, telling Bloomberg on Sunday that the cases he has identified are the result of evolutionary pressures on ancestral strains to acquire these mutations rather than a single recombination event.