Norway’s FHI believes “deltacron” may be a laboratory error and not a new variant

Photo: Tor Erik Schrøder / NTB

Researchers in Cyprus believe they have found a new corona variant that is a mixture of the omicron and delta variants. Norway’s FHI believes, however, that it is a laboratory error.

“For the time being, we consider the so-called new variant ‘deltacron’ to be a laboratory error and not a new variant. If the WHO confirms that it is a new variant, we will take a closer look at it,” Preben Aavitsland at the National Institute of Public Health (FHI) wrote in an email to Dagbladet.

Researchers in Cyprus believe they have discovered a new coronavirus variant. The alleged variant is referred to as a combination of delta and omicron and has therefore been named “deltacron” by the media.

The FHI is waiting for more information to get a better basis for assessing the findings.

“For the time being, it seems that there may be some problems with the results that have been generated,” Karoline Bragstad at the FHI stated.

Doubts about the “variant”

The FHI’s assessment is in line with the assessment of several international researchers, the newspaper VG writes.

“Deltacron is not real and is probably due to laboratory contamination of sequence fragments with omicron in a delta sample,” Krutika Kupalli, an expert on infectious diseases and a member of the WHO’s COVID group, wrote on Twitter.

Virologist Tom Peacock at the Imperial Department of Infectious Disease at the Imperial College London supported Kupalli’s views. 

Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews

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