The United Kingdom reports their first case of Deltacron which is a hybrid of Omicron and Delta COVID virus.
The hybrid Deltacron was generated in a patient who caught both variants, Delta and omicron, at the same time, and this new type of Coronavirus – a combination of Delta and Omicron has been detected in the United Kingdom, health officials said.
The UK Health Security Agency officials (UKHSA), however, said they are yet not worried about it as the cases are low.
The officials are investigating whether it was imported or originated in Britain. They also said that they are yet to determine how infectious or severe the newly evolved virus is or whether it will impact vaccine performance.
A UKHSA source told MailOnline, “We monitor everything as a matter of course, but we are not particularly anxious about this variant. It is on that list just because we are currently looking at it.”
The super-mutant virus, whose scientific name is BA.1 + B.1.617.2, was first discovered by a researcher in Cyprus late last year.
Leonidos Kostrikis, who works at the University of Cyprus, claimed that his team identified 25 cases of Deltacron. According to Kostrikis, the hybrid strain has Omicron-like genetic signatures within the Delta genome.
However, many leading publications dismissed the discovery as a “lab error”. Thomas Peacock, a research associate at Imperial College London’s Barclay Laboratory, which focuses on coronavirus research, said on Twitter that Deltacron “looks to be quite clearly contamination”. However, they are now rethinking it was a lab error.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) had earlier pointed out that it’s possible for an individual to be infected with different variants of SARS-CoV-2.
Presently, India has recorded 22,270 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the Covid tally to 4,28,02,505. According to Union health ministry data, the recovery rate crossed the 98 per cent-mark again. The death count has climbed to 5,11,230 with 325 daily fatalities, the data updated at 8 am stated.