WHO Denies Reports of Emergence of New Virus Comprises Delta, Omicron Mutants

The technical director of emergency programs at the World Health Organization (WHO), Maria Van Kerkhove, suggested that the possible hybrid virus of the “Delta” and “Omicron” versions of the Coronavirus was the result of a laboratory error.

Van Kerkhove, who heads the WHO's pandemic response team, asked via Twitter on Monday evening, not to publish terms such as "Deltacron" or "Florona" to define the simultaneous transmission of different viruses.

She explained that these words are called a hybrid of viruses or strains, and this is not scientifically true.

"It is likely that the so-called Deltachron was caused by contamination during the sequencing process" in the laboratory, Van Kerkhove added.

The Director of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology at the University of Cyprus, Leontis Kostrikis, previously reported in a press conference held on January 8, the detecting of a "hybrid" of the "Delta" and "Omicron" mutant, which, according to WHO, provoked a "tsunami" of infection with the disease.

He explained that the new mutant, which he named "Deltachron", has a genetic basis similar to the "Delta" version, but it also includes several mutations contained in the "Omicron" variant.