"Deltacron": New Corona variant discovered

Created: 01/10/2022, 08:37 AM

From: Tobias Utz

Again a new Corona variant is detected: But how dangerous is the mutation?

Nicosia / London - A new variant of the coronavirus has been discovered in Cyprus.

A team of scientists reported at the weekend that it was "Deltacron", a mixture of the Delta and the Omicron variant * of Sars-CoV-2.

This is reported by the Bloomberg news agency.

Virologist Leondios Kostrikis, a researcher at the University of Cyprus, is behind the variant find.

According to their own information, his team was able to decode “Deltacron” with the help of sequencing.

At the beginning of January 2021, the data on “Deltacron” were finally sent to the international science database “Gisaid”.

New Corona variant "Deltacron" discovered

"In the future we will see whether this strain is pathological or more contagious, or whether it will prevail over Delta and Omikron," said Kostrikis.

So far, only 25 infections with the "Deltacron" variant have been found.

The data situation is extremely thin: Little is known about the infectiousness and the severity of the disease of Covid-19.

A new corona variant was found in Cyprus.

(Symbol photo) © Bihlmayer Fotografie / Imago Images

How the new Corona variant * could have come about is also unclear.

A combination of different strands of variants is considered an option.

Virologist Tom Peacock from Imperial College in London put forward another theory following the find.

He reported on Twitter about a possible contamination in the laboratory.

A new Corona variant was only recently discovered in France.

There is hardly any reliable data on this either.

According to Peacock, in both cases it is unlikely that "something real or bad" will happen: "There are (yet) no clear indications," says the virologist.

(tu)