PARIS — Experts said Monday that an alleged hybrid
coronavirus mutation dubbed "
Deltacron" reportedly discovered in a
Cyprus lab is most likely the result of a lab contamination, and not a new worrying
variant.
اضافة اعلان
Cypriot media reported the discovery Saturday, describing it
as having "the genetic background of the Delta variant along with some of
the mutations of Omicron".
While it is possible for coronaviruses to genetically
combine, it is rare, and scientists analyzing the discovery of so-called
"Deltacron" say it is unlikely.
"The Cypriot 'Deltacron' sequences reported by several
large media outlets look to be quite clearly contamination," Tom Peacock,
a virologist with the infectious diseases department at Imperial College
London, tweeted over the weekend.
Jeffrey Barrett, the head of the COVID-19 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 certain
sequencing procedures.
"This is almost certainly not a biological recombinant
of the Delta and Omicron lineages," he said Monday.
Scientists are eager to battle a deluge of disinformation
about COVID-19, much of it circulating online.
Last week, unverified reports emerged of a
"flurona" or "flurone" virus circulating — a combination of
the flu and the coronavirus — which the World Health Organization (WHO)
dismissed Monday.
"Let's not use words like Deltacron, flurona or
flurone. Please," tweeted Maria van Kerkhove, an infectious disease
epidemiologist at the
WHO.
"These words imply combination of viruses/variants and
this is not happening," she said.
While people can suffer from influenza and coronavirus at
the same time, the two viruses cannot combine.
In contrast to new variants of COVID-19 such as
Omicron,
which greatly impact the course of the pandemic, cases of simultaneous
infection of the flu and coronavirus are nothing new.
Since the start of the pandemic, the coronavirus has given rise
to dozens of variants, four of which have been designated "of
concern" by the WHO: Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron.
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