In the World Health Organization (WHO) “Deltacron” is considered an artificially created mutation during sequencing. Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist, head of the technical group of the WHO Emergency Diseases Unit, wrote about this in Twitter January 10.
“Let’s not use words like Deltacron, Fluron. You are welcome! These words imply a combination of viruses / strains, but this does not happen. The “deltacron” was probably formed from sample contamination during sequencing, “she wrote.
Earlier that day, geneticist Dmitry Pruss, who works in Salt Lake City (USA), told Izvestia that most often laboratories observe sequencing artifacts (errors) due to such a number of mutations in the Omicron genome that some fragments of the genome cannot be read without errors.
Kamil Khafizov, the head of the scientific group for the development of new diagnostic methods based on sequencing technologies of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare, also stated about the erroneous nature of the origin of the strain.
He said that the appearance of “Deltacron” may turn out to be a laboratory error, since a mixture of variants of the coronavirus can be obtained if the laboratory’s operating rules are not followed. For example, if the analysis was carried out by an insufficiently experienced employee.
