A Cypriot scientist defended his assertion that there is a new strain of Covid-19 that combines the properties of the delta and omicron variants.
Other scientists have speculated that Leonidos Kostrikis’s findings are a result of laboratory contamination. But he told Bloomberg in an emailed statement that the cases he has identified “indicate an evolutionary pressure to an ancestral strain to acquire these mutations and not a result of a single recombination event.”
Leonidos Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus and head of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology, said deltacrone infection is higher among patients hospitalized with Covid-19 than in non-hospitalized patients, so this rules out the contamination hypothesis.
However, samples were processed in multiple sequencing procedures in more than one country. He said at least one sequence from Israel has been deposited in a global database that displays the genetic characteristics of deltachron.
Health Minister Michael Hadjipantela said Sunday that the new variant isn’t of concern, and more details will be given at a news conference this week, Philenews reported.
For more Details >> Read This Blog <<
Comments
Post a Comment