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Cypriot researchers have discovered 25 cases of a corona strain that combines elements of the delta and omicron variants – “deltakron.”
While Austria is currently struggling with the Omicron variant – numbers are rising rapidly, with authorities reporting 10,291 new infections on Sunday – more bad news reaches us from Cyprus: Researchers discovered a new variant that has Omicron-like genetic features in Delta genomes.
25 delta crone cases in Cyprus
Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus and head of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology, discovered the deltakron mutant, which is a combination of delta and omicron.
Kostrikis and his team identified 25 such cases. Statistical analysis shows that the relative frequency of the combined infection is higher in patients who were hospitalized for corona than in patients who were not. Sequences of the 25 delta-cron cases were submitted to GISAID, the international coronavirus tracking database, on Jan. 7.
How dangerous is the variant?
Because the variant was discovered only recently, the professor points out that it is too early to tell to what extent the Deltakron variant is dangerous. “We’ll see in the future if this strain is more pathological or contagious, or if it will prevail over delta and omicron,” he said. However, Kostrikis personally believes that this strain will also be displaced by the highly contagious Omicron variant.
- source: heute.at/picture: Image by fernando zhiminaicela from Pixabay
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