A researcher from the University of Cyprus announced that he had discovered a new variant of Covid-19, which would be a combination of Delta and Omicron. But several scientists display their skepticism. Founded discovery or simple manipulation error?
Can the Delta and Omicron variants combine to create yet another variant of the virus? The question in any case stirred social networks this Sunday, January 9. Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biology at the University of Cyprus and head of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology, announced on Saturday that he had discovered a new variant of Covid-19 in 25 patients. Its genome would have both Delta and Omicron characteristics, as reported by the Bloomberg news agency.
Asked by the Cypriot media, the scientist said he had identified this new mutation of the virus by analyzing samples taken both from the general population and from hospitalized patients. Of these samples, 25 had “genetic signatures” of the Omicron variant in the middle of a Delta variant genome, suggesting that the two had combined.
Leondios Kostrikis indicates that it is likely that this specific variant, dubbed Deltacron, has not been identified anywhere else so far. This discovery could therefore be of global interest.
The study was sent on Friday to GISAID, the cooperative database which lists all the observed modifications and mutations of Covid-19, and which freely makes this information available to the global scientific community.
A false alarm?
But some scientists seem skeptical of Leondios Kostrikis’ announcement, as reported by “Liberation”. According to the French daily, this “discovery” could only be a bad manipulation in a laboratory.
Among them, Tom Peacock, virologist at Imperial College London. He has thus, in a series of tweets, demonstrated that the arrival of the Deltacron was, for him, only a handling error between samples of different variants.
“The real“ recombinations ”appear a few weeks or even a few months after the simultaneous circulation of several variants. It’s only been a little over two weeks since Omicron has been circulating, I doubt that there could have already been recombinations… ”
For his part, Leondios Kostrikis persists and signs, as reported by Bloomberg. The Cypriot scientist claims that he was not mistaken. He also specified, Saturday, his two hypotheses: this variant would be more present among hospitalized patients than in the general population, which could indicate that it is quite virulent. But its existence could be quickly supplanted by that of the Omicron variant, whose contagiousness leads to a record number of contaminations.
Deltacron’s discovery is therefore information to be conditional. For the moment.