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There was no need to panic at the moment, Vinod Scaria, a scientist at the CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, has said days after clusters of recombinant Delta and Omicron variants of Covid-19, dubbed "Deltacron", were reported from across the globe.
"Nothing to suggest at this moment that these recombinants have any additional advantage compared to Omicron," the leading virologist wrote on Twitter.
Scaria said more epidemiological data was awaited as more genomes get reported from across the world.
The expert said that while recombinations in SARS-COV-2 are not as frequent as seen in influenza, there have been multiple recombination events reported in the coronavirus pandemic.
Some previously named lineages include XA (UK and India), XB (US) and XC (alpha delta) in Japan, Scaria said.
UK on Delta-Omicron recombinant variant of SARS-COV-2
On February 11, Britain had listed the Delta-Omicron recombinant variant of SARS-COV-2 under 'signals currently under monitoring and investigation'.
Additional clusters of Delta-Omicron recombinant genomes have been reported from Queensland in Australia and another seven recombinants have been reported from the east coast of the US.
Recombination occurs when fragments of two different variants of a virus infect the same host cell.
Meanwhile, according to a South African study, the rapidly spreading omicron BA.2 subvariant doesn’t cause significantly more severe disease than the original version.
The emergence of BA.2 has caused widespread concern as it appears to be even more transmissible than the original omicron strain that was first identified in South Africa and has since spread around the world, leading to waves of infections in the US, Europe and elsewhere.
The study indicates that, like the original version, BA.2 is relatively mild in comparison with earlier dominant strains, such as delta.
The study analysed cases that occurred as BA.2 rapidly swept through South Africa. At the end of January, 80% of infections in the country were due to the omicron subvariant, up from just 5% in early December.
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