An alleged hybrid coronavirus mutation called “Deltakron” discovered in a Cyprus laboratory is the result of a laboratory contamination, not a new worrying variant, experts said on Monday.
Cypriot media reported the discovery on Saturday, describing it as “the genetic background of a delta variant with certain mutations of Omicron”.
Although it is possible for the coronavirus to combine genetically, this is rare, and scientists are analyzing the discovery of the so-called “.deltacron“Say it’s not likely.
Tom Peacock, a virologist at the Department of Infectious Diseases at Imperial College London, tweeted over the weekend: “The Cypriot ‘Deltakron’ sequences reported by several major media outlets look quite clearly contaminated.”
Jeffrey Barrett, Head of COVID-19 The Genomics Initiative at Britain’s Wellcome Sanger Institute said the alleged mutations are located on a part of the genome that is vulnerable to error in some sequencing procedures.
“It is almost certainly not a biological recombinant of the Delta and Omicron lineages,” he said Monday.
Scientists are eager to fight the flood of misinformation about COVID-19, much of which is circulating online.
Last week, unverified reports emerged of the spread of a “florona” or “fluron” virus – a combination of flu and coronavirus – that the World Health Organization (WHO) dismissed on Monday.
Maria van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the WHO, tweeted: “Let’s not use words like deltachron, fluorona or fluoron. Please.”
“These words indicate a combination of viruses/variants and that is not happening,” she said.
While people can suffer from influenza and coronavirus at the same time, both viruses cannot occur together.
Unlike newer forms of COVID-19 such as Omicron, which greatly influence the course of the pandemic, cases of simultaneous infection with the flu and coronavirus are nothing new.
Since the start of the pandemic, the coronavirus has given rise to dozens of types, four of which have been designated “of concern” by the WHO: alpha, beta, delta and omicron.
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.
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