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A new case of the Deltacron virus has been officially detected in the UK. According to the country’s health security agency, the virus was spotted on February 11 in a person sick with Covid-19. For Dr. Gérald Kierzek, emergency doctor and medical director of Doctissimo, we must “stop playing scared”.
According to the Health Security Agency of the United Kingdom, contamination with the Deltacron variant, a recombination of the Delta and Omicron variants, has been detected on British soil and would be the first official case in the world. It would be a patient who was contaminated and suffering from Covid-19. The variant has been added to the list of so-called “under surveillance” and “under investigation” variants.
Fusion between the two variants within the patient?
To explain this recombination, the scientists think that the patient contracted the two variants at the same time, both the Delta but also the Omicron. But scientists are currently unable to give an opinion on the transmissibility or the dangerousness of this new mutation, nor on the number of cases identified.
Remember that this new Deltacron variant was originally detected in Cyprus last January in about 25 patients. But the experts had questioned this discovery, believing that it was a question of a bad handling having led to the contamination of samples.
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Should we be worried about this discovery?
Quoted by the Daily Mail, Professor Paul Hunter, an expert in infectious diseases at the University of East Anglia, this new variant “shouldn’t pose much of a threat“thanks to the number of people vaccinated as well as the immunity acquired against the original Delta and Omicron strains.
For his part, Dr Gérald Kierzek recalls that “viruses mutate and change and this is a normal phenomenon”. He also adds that in general, “they evolve towards more contagiousness and less virulence. Obviously, we are not immune to the appearance of a new variant. But we must broaden the focus and stop stopping at the slightest new variant. We must leave their study to scientists and above all it must not guide politicians in a ‘panic’ mode”, before concluding “Let’s stop playing at being scared”.