Deltacron: a new COVID variant or just a lab error?

Reports of a new COVID variant emerged over the weekend from Cyprus that they dubbed “deltacron” as it had a genetic makeup similar to both delta and the omicron variant, but the global health experts now suspect it to be a false alarm.

How could it be a false alarm?

According to the World Health Organization’s Dr Krutika Kuppalli, the supposed “new variant” could have resulted from lab contamination. In a recent tweet, she said:

Dr Leondios Kostrikis, who first reported “deltacron”, however, reiterated in an interview with Bloomberg that the new variant did not emerge because of a “technical error”.

Recombination is a real possibility

Other notable names that see “deltacron” as contamination include Dr Boghuma Kabisen Titanji of Emory University. She, however, warned in her tweet that recombination was indeed a risk considering the two variants are coexisting.

Dr Tom Peacock of Imperial College London and Fatima Tokhmafshan of McGill University also believe deltacron to be a product of a lab error.