At the end of December 2021, the Indian media "Times of India" created a new word "Delmicron", which means the "mixed strain" of the new crown Delta strain and the Omicron strain, and said that the "mixed strain" spreads quickly and causes serious symptoms, and the infected people will have symptoms such as high fever, cough, loss of smell and taste, headache and sore throat. The news release has attracted many "hammers", and many experts have stressed that no new strains have emerged.
But the rumors of the "mixed strain" did not last long, and on January 7, 2022, scientists in the Middle Eastern island nation of Cyprus repeated the same trick, but changed the name of the "mixed strain", and "Deltacron" appeared.
Leondios Kostrikis, a scientist in Cyprus, claims conclusively: "The infection rate of Deltacron patients in hospitalized patients is higher than that of non-hospitalized patients, so the hypothesis of laboratory sequencing contamination can be ruled out." The attitude of the country's health minister is also subtle, and he is actually proud of it: "This study has brought Cyprus into the international context of health events. He also said that more information about Deltacron will be released this week.
Kostrikis named the new variant he found "Deltacron" because genetic signatures similar to the Ormi kerong strain were found in the genome of the Delta strain. Kostrikis and his team confirmed that 25 people had been infected with Deltacron, and on January 7, samples from the 25 people were sent to GISADID, an international database that tracks changes in the coronavirus. A few days later, samples from another 27 people were uploaded.
This time, the academic response was still very fast, and on January 9, Krutika Kuppalli, a new crown pneumonia expert at the World Health Organization, tweeted: There is no such thing as #Deltacron, #Omicron and #Delta have not formed super variants. Krutika Kuppalli notes that this is most likely a sequencing artifact formed by the Delta sample contaminated with fragments of Omicron, an untrue result.
Krutika Kuppalli joked in a tweet: Don't always think about giving THE new crown virus group CP.
In addition to Krutika Kuppalli, many experts have claimed on social media and in the media that the 52 sequences uploaded by Leondios Kostrikis did not point to a new variant, nor was it the result of viral recombination, possibly as a result of laboratory contamination. After all, there is a "wolf coming" in the Indian media, and the academic community is very cautious about it.
Dr Tom Peacock, from Imperial College London, noted that many experts have looked at viral sequences and come to the same conclusion that it is not a viral recombinant and that no rearrangement of genetic material has occurred. The study samples were clearly contaminated.
Leondios Kostrikis, the initiator of the controversy, removed the sequences from the database's open directory 72 hours after they were uploaded. Kostrikis explains: "The original hypothesis was misunderstood by the general public. Some of the gossip hastily ended the farce.
GISAID's Cheryl Bennett said that since January 2020, more than 7 million pieces of data uploaded to GISAID about the new crown genome in the past year have been uploaded, and it is inevitable that there will be erroneous data.
Leondios Kostrikis' team's sequence of Deltacron was generated from a virus sample obtained in December. Kostrikis explained in an email to Nature that his initial hypothesis was that certain Delta variants had mutations common on the Omicron variant of the spike protein. These mutations can lead to Delta variant strains making sequencing more difficult.
Leondios Kostrikis's explanation is also not bought, and virologist Jeremy Kamil believes that if the sample is mixed with a little Omicron strain contamination, the sequencing results will also partially look similar to the Omicron strain. Kamil said: "This is a very, very common situation.
Kostrikis was still stiff-mouthed, saying that he would study the advice given to him by the experts...
Delmicron, Deltacron, including the combination of COVID-19 and flu influenza, are not to be laughed at. People should be cautious about COVID-19. Dr. Zhang Wenhong also stressed that the new crown is not a big flu. Although the Omikeron variant is less toxic than the Delta variant, it must not be confused with the "soft" flu.
Edit: Ge Ge Wu