A first in the United Kingdom. This Friday February 11, 2022, the country reported a first case of hybrid "Deltacron" contamination in a UK patient. But what hides between the word "Deltacron"? In concrete words, it is a "combination" of the Delta and Omicron variants, already known across the world. According to the Mirror, the health authorities in the UK consider that the person infected with thus mutation has been both contaminated by the Delta and the Omicron variant. Since then, the country's health authorities have listed "Deltacron" in the list of mutations "under surveillance" and "under investigation" as the Delta and Omicron variants are still said "of concern" by the WHO.
For the time being, we do not know yet if this mutation is more contagious or dangerous than the previous ones, but the UK's NHS will study this "combination" and try to learn more.
According to Paul Hunter - a British expert in infectious diseases at the University of East Anglia - who spoke to the DailyMail, said "Deltacron [...] shouldn't pose too much of a threat" especially because of the high vaccination level and acquired immunity against Delta and Omicron.
Back to early January, this fusion between Delta and Omicron was already identified in Cyprus. “There are currently omicron and delta co-infections and we found this strain that is a combination of these two”, Cyprus University biologic science professor Leondios Kostrikis claimed. With his team, they have identified the Delta variant in 25 samples of Omicron cases, 11 of them coming from people hospitalized because of Covid-19.
