Cases of 'Deltacron' Covid Variant Found in UK Samples, Says Health Agency; Nation Monitoring Strain

Cases of a possible ‘hybrid’ variant of Delta and Omicron, called the ‘Deltacron’ have emerged in samples in the United Kingdom, the country’s health agency said. The UKHSA said Deltacron possesses characteristics of both the Delta and Omicron strains, and is being monitored following the discovery of the cases.

So far, the UKHSA has not issued an official statement about how contagious Deltacron is or how severe its symptoms can be.

The Delta virus was responsible for the deadly second wave of infection in India, and Omicron is responsible for the third. However, given the decreasing number of cases on a daily basis, some experts believe Deltacron will be less lethal than previous variants.

A Deltacron variant was discovered late last year by a researcher in Cyprus. Leonidos Kostrikis, a researcher at the University of Cyprus, claimed that his team discovered 25 Deltacron cases.

On January 7, 2022, the sequences of the 25 Deltacron cases were sent to GISAID, an international database that tracks virus changes. The hybrid strain, according to Kostrikis, has Omicron-like genetic signatures within the Delta genome.

However, his discovery was met with widespread skepticism, with many leading publications dismissing Deltacron as a “lab error.” Deltacron “looks to be quite clearly contamination,” according to Thomas Peacock, a research associate at Imperial College London’s Barclay Laboratory, which focuses on coronavirus research.

The World Health Organization (WHO) had earlier that the term is being used when a person is infected with both Delta as well as the Omicron variant of the Covid-19. It added that Deltacron is “not really a thing.”

During a discussion, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead of Covid-19, said that Deltacron might be a result of “contamination” during the sequencing process. She said the instance of individuals infected with both influenza and Covid-19 “throughout this pandemic” are in plenty, reports had said.

“There was a recent systematic review that looked at the prevalence of this (coinfection with Covid-19 and influenza). They also looked at whether or not people had more severe disease and the review discovered that coinfection didn’t increase the severity of the disease,” she said.

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