Filenews 8 January 2022
A new variant of coronavirus was identified in samples of positive cases from the Cypriot community by the team of Professor Leontios Kostrikis of the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Cyprus.
Speaking to Sigma's tv newscast, Mr Kostrikis made reference to the Deltacron mutation which was identified in 25 cases and it appears that the strains have a genetic background of the Delta mutation.
"We find a significant number of variants that have been identified only in Omikron which has differences from the rest of the strains because its genome has 30 different variants," he noted. "Of these 10 variants of Omikron were identified in the incidents we identified in Cyprus."
He added that there is international interest in the findings.
According to him, of the 25 patients in whom the new mutation was detected, 11 were hospitalized and 14 people were in the general population. "The frequency of finding the new mutation in hospitalized patients was higher than in people who were not hospitalized. We can say that Deltacron's association with the disease that requires hospitalization is not accidental," he said.
As he explained it was so named because it concerns the Delta and Omikron strains. "There were whispers that talked about such a mutation but it has not been identified in any country," he said, stressing that it is too early to see whether it will prevail over Omikron and Delta. According to his own analyses, however, the new strain could displace Omikron.
Source: philenews/ Sigma
