Emergence of Deltacron variant exposes scary new ‘supervirus’ threat

The world is on edge over yet another Covid variant – and experts warn the arrival of Deltacron could be an alarming sign of things to come.

The arrival of the new Deltacron variant sent shockwaves across the globe – and experts say there’s a good reason why we should be concerned.

The new variant was officially recognised after its genomic sequence was uploaded to the global Covid database by virologists in France last week.

An initial analysis of the variant revealed it was similar to the Delta strain, but includes Omicron’s spike protein which increases transmission, sparking early fears could it combine the more potent Delta with Omicron’s high rate of infectiousness.

“Delta basically grabbed Omicron’s spike protein,” Jeremy Kamil, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Louisiana State University preciously told NBC.

“This is essentially Delta trying to hang on by plagiarising from Omicron. The genomes get a bit acrobatic, and pieces can jump and then recombine together.

One aspect of the new Deltacron variant has scientists on edge. Picture: Karen Ducey/Getty Images/AFP

“It’s like if you had 70 printouts of an identical manuscript on your desk and then an office fan turns on and blows things around, and you’re trying to put everything back in order. “Viruses are no different from that.”

Scientists believe Deltacron emerged in a patient who happened to be infected with both the Delta and Omicron strains simultaneously, and at the moment, it is still rare, after being confirmed in only a handful of countries in Europe.

However, it is believed it will spread further, with the WHO warning it was likely to tear through more countries in the weeks ahead.

“As we look more, as we do more sequencing, it is possible that this recombinant virus will be detected in other countries, but it is circulating as we understand at very low levels,” Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, said recently.

And one key aspect of Deltacron has experts on edge.

That’s because Deltacron is a so-called “Frankenstein” hybrid – a strain that’s able to steal the most successful parts of various strains and rapidly merge them into a “supervirus” in a process known as recombination.

For recombination to occur, two variants must be able to infect the same cell at the same time, which is how particularly deadly flu strains are born.

“ … the more the virus circulates, the more opportunities it has to change. The possibility of recombinants has always been on the table and we are able to detect these recombinants now with good sequencing around the world,” the World Health Organisation’s Dr Mike Ryan said recently.

“Recombination occurs when two viruses infect the same person or the same animal and what you then have is … effectively two viruses can exchange large amounts of genetic information and you effectively get a new virus out the other end … that is how we generate pandemics of influenza.

The World Health Organisation is monitoring Deltacron “very, very closely”. Picture: Handout/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/AFP

“So we have to be very cautious … we have to watch these recombinant events very, very closely.”

In a recent interview with NPR, Public Health Laboratory bioinformatician Scott Nguyen drilled home just how worrying these recombinant events can be, revealing some aspects of Deltacron caught experts off guard.

“From the variant’s perspective, it has the best of worlds,” he said.

“It’s surprising that the virus can really do this, and do it very well.

“You know, early on in the pandemic, we were all expecting SARS-CoV-2 to not mutate too much. But this virus has surprised us at every corner. So I think these recombinant variants provide some interesting clues to how this virus is going to evolve next.”