A hybrid of strains "Omicron" and "Delta" revealed in St. Petersburg

RBC writes about this, referring to the American geneticist Dmitry Pruss. Before that, Olga Kopylova, host of the “Advise, Doctor” program, drew attention to the find.

“We double-checked everything we could and came to a confident conclusion: this is not a mistake, but really a hybrid virus”, - Pruss said.

This species has not been found anywhere except in Russia. In St. Petersburg, the prevalence of this strain is still low. Now Delta has almost disappeared, and the combination of it and Omicron is a rarity. In early July, the first of the hybrids appeared in the databases, and by the end of July, researchers from the Influenza Institute. Smorodintsev in St. Petersburg found even more such genomes.

“Whether the recently discovered “Russian Deltacron” is dangerous remains to be determined,” the scientist noted.

Pruss believes that more active "reading of genomes" is needed, as well as "more transparent reporting with uploading to world databases".

“Without this, there is not enough data to say whether it is time to add epidemiological control measures”, - the virologist emphasized.

On the eve it became known that in the capital of India, New Delhi , a particularly infectious variant of the Omicron coronavirus strain was found, which was assigned the identification number BA-2.75.