Is the Deltacron Next ?

A Cypriot researcher is said to have identified “Deltacron”, a variant of the coronavirus believed to combine Delta and Omicron
A Cypriot researcher believes he has identified a new variant of the coronavirus. Professor Leondios Kostrikis says his team has found 25 cases he calls “Deltacron.”
Deltacron is believed to be a combination of variants of Delta and Omicron coronavirus.
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Bloomberg News reports that a Cypriot researcher says he has identified a new variant of the coronavirus called “Deltacron,” which combines the Delta and Omicron variants.

Leondios Kostrikis, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus, said in an interview with Sigma TV on Friday that he and a team of researchers have identified 25 cases of Deltacron.

It’s too early to say what effect Deltacron will have, Kostrikis told Sigma TV, according to Bloomberg News. “Let’s see in the future whether this strain is more pathological or contagious or whether it is prevalent,” he said. However, he doubted it would bypass Omicron, which is highly contagious and spreads rapidly.

However, at least one virologist suspects that the 25 cases discovered by Kostrikis and his team are indeed caused by a new variation. Tom Peacock, a virologist at the British Imperial Department of Infectious Disease, said in a tweet on Saturday that it could be contamination.

“The Cypriot ‘deltacron’ sequences reported by several major media appear to be quite clearly contaminated – they do not cluster into phylogenetic wood and have a complete arctic primer sequencing amplicon from the omicronic otherwise delta backbone,” he said. “We will see in the future whether this strain is more pathological or contagious or whether it dominates the delta and omicron,” he said. But his personal view is that the highly contagious omicron transformation also displaces this position.