In many countries, as restrictions lift and freedoms are restored, there’s a general feeling that the pandemic is over. There is, however, still the significant concern that a dangerous new variant could emerge.

This happened when omicron arrived, but we got lucky with that one. Omicron turned out to be more transmissible, but mercifully it hasn’t caused an increase in severe disease in most countries where it is dominant.

But this wasn’t guaranteed. Variants crop up randomly, and new ones have the potential to be more dangerous than previous ones. Another has just arrived, and is currently going by the name deltacron. It is – as you can probably guess – a hybrid of delta and omicron, the two variants dominant most recently.

Deltacron’s story begins in mid-February, when scientists at the Institut Pasteur in Paris uploaded a genetic sequence of the coronavirus that looked very different from previous sequences. The virus sample had come from an elderly man in northern France and looked odd. Most of its genetic sequence was the same as delta’s, which was dominant worldwide up until late last year, but the part of the sequence that encodes the virus’s spike protein – a key part of its external structure, which it uses to get inside cells in the body – came from omicron.

By March, three further hybrid genetic sequences had been reported, this time in the US. There are now over 60 logged, across France, the Netherlands, Denmark, the US and the UK.

There may, however, be different deltacrons. Scientists at the Institut Pasteur have said the deltacron sequences reported in the UK and US have certain differences from those found in other countries. They’ve said that it might be necessary to add a number to these different forms of deltacron, to indicate which is which.

Read more at The Conversation: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/virus-variant-coronavirus-spike-protein-deltacron-2104532897

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