Call for more evidence
While many experts have dismissed the claims that Deltacron is a new hybrid variant, others are willing to wait for more evidence.
Speaking to Medical News Today, Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, commented that “[f]urther local epidemiological investigation in Cyprus is warranted to sort this out. The world certainly is watching.”
“Deltacron has attracted a great deal of interest in the COVID scientific community. Whether it is, indeed, a new variant that has emerged as a result of a combination of Delta and Omicron viruses from a simultaneous infection in a human or whether it happened because of a laboratory accident still remains to be determined.”
– Dr. William Schaffner
Whether that evidence will be forthcoming from Cyprus, or elsewhere, is open to question. MNT contacted Dr. Kostrikis but was still awaiting a response when this article went to press.
In the meantime, researchers affiliated with the GISAID Initiative — a database that “promotes the rapid sharing of data from all influenza viruses and the coronavirus causing COVID-19” — have urged renewed caution when it comes to interpreting the data that allegedly indicate the emergence of a new sub-variant of SARS-CoV-2.
“[R]ushing to conclusions on data that have just been made available by labs that find themselves under significant time pressure to generate data in a timely manner is not helpful in any outbreak,” Cheryl Bennett, an official at the GISAID office in Washington, D.C., has told NatureTrusted Source.
Dr. Kostrikis has since commented to Nature that he and his team are planning to submit their data for peer review, noting that they are “in the process of investigating all the crucial views expressed by prominent scientists around the world about [their] recent announcement” regarding the emergence of an alleged new variant.
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