Fact Check: Is `Deltacron' a new Covid 19 variant?

Click here to view the post.

Click here for similar posts.

Fact check:

The claim is misleading.

A strain of Covid-19 that combines Delta and Omicron was found in Cyprus, according to Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus and head of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology, according to news reports.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-08/cyprus-finds-covid-19-infections-that-combine-delta-and-omicron

We found a tweet by Dr. Kritika Kuppalli, a member of the WHO Covid-19 technical team, saying that Deltacron is not real and that there was nothing to fear.

Further, we found media reports which reported that during a discussion, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead of Covid-19 said that Deltacron might be a result of contamination during the sequencing process.

She said the number of individuals infected with both influenza and Covid-19 "throughout this pandemic" is in plenty.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/health/is-deltacron-a-newly-found-covid-variant-heres-what-who-thinks/2406216/lite/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.news18.com/amp/news/india/is-deltacron-a-new-covid-19-variant-who-clears-air-on-infection-with-delta-and-omicron-4654022.html

Imperial College London virologist Tom Peacock said in a series of posts on Twitter that "The Cypriot 'Deltacron' sequences reported by several large media outlets look to be quite clearly contamination", noting that it does not demonstrate key aspects that would point to the appearance of a new variant, as per the news report.

World Health Organization (WHO) usually identifies and determines the names of Corona variants, assigning alphanumeric names to the coronavirus variants with Greek letters. Full information on the names of the Corona variants can be found on the WHO website.

https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants/

However, there is no corona variant named Deltacron in this information. This makes it clear that the Deltacron is not a Covid variant. Information regarding the doubts of the Covid variants can be found here.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/question-and-answers-hub/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-(covid-19)-variants-of-sars-cov-2

Hence, the claim is misleading. Deltacron is not a new variant.