Is the “Deltacron” variant, discovered in Cyprus, worrying?

A professor from the University of Cyprus said on Friday that he had discovered a new variant of the virus responsible for Covid-19: “Deltacron”. “There are currently co-infections with Omicron and Delta, and we have found this variant which is a combination of the two,” Leondios Kostrikis told the local channel Sigma TV, in remarks taken up by the American media. Bloomberg.

As reported by our colleagues from France Info, the head of the biotechnology and molecular virology laboratory at the Cypriot university claims to have identified this variant in 25 people. According to him, the genetic profile of “Deltacron” would be close to the Delta variant while comprising about ten mutations present in Omicron.

A “scariant” that you shouldn’t be afraid of

During the weekend, many international media picked up on this announcement. But the scientific community quickly became skeptical. Several researchers pointed out that it was impossible to find a single line with the big twenty samples supposed of “Deltacron”.

In a tweet posted on Saturday, widely taken up by other scientists, the virologist Tom Peacock has thus pointed out a handling error. According to this member of Imperial College London, the 25 genetic sequences posted by the Cypriots on the Gisaid database “seem to be quite clearly the result of contamination” between several samples. A conclusion supported according to him by the fact that the sequences in question do not all appear in the same place on the phylogenetic tree of Gisaid, whose role is to present kinship relations between living organisms.

The expert considers, moreover, that the observation of a new variant can only be made credible if it is carried out in several laboratories. “” Deltacron “surely comes from contamination during sequencing,” researcher Maria Van Kerkhove, who heads the fight against Covid-19 at the World Health Organization (WHO), said on Twitter on Monday. As for the physicist Eric Topol, he evokes a “scariant” (frightening variant) of which one should not be afraid.

Cypriot scientist persists

In an email sent to BloombergOn Sunday, the Cypriot scientist replied that not all samples were sequenced simultaneously, some having been collected at the hospital and others outside. He adds that a similar result has been posted from Israel. Non-alarmist, Leondios Kostrikis believes that “Deltacron” will not replace Omicron, whose contagiousness is particularly high. The scientist insists: “Deltacron” would be the result of the natural evolution of an older variant and not the fusion in the same patient of the two variants that are Delta and Omicron.

So “Deltacron”, a new and powerful embodiment of the coronavirus? Far from being proven, this hypothesis is the last episode in a series of media frenzy [variant français, flurona, etc.] since the meteoric and very real development of the Omicron variant at the end of 2021.

Still, the new variants are closely watched. Epidemiologists regularly warn that a more contagious or more severe incarnation of the coronavirus could change the face of the epidemic. “There are variants that emerge all the time,” French epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet recalled on Monday on BFMTV. But, in recent days, “no variant that is said to be worrying”.