Russia records 6 cases of Covid-19 Deltacron hybrid variant - Rospotrebnadzor

MOSCOW. Aug 11 (Interfax) - Russia has detected six cases of the Covid-19 Deltacron variant, a hybrid of the Delta and Omicron variants, yet there are no grounds to believe that the new variant causes more severe infections or is more contagious, the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) said in a statement.

"As of August 10, 2022, six genomic sequences that belong to the aforesaid Covid-19 variant have been uploaded to the VGARus database. The sequences are dated July and early August. Five samples were taken for analysis in St. Petersburg and one in Moscow," Rospotrebnadzor said.

The patients diagnosed with the hybrid variant of Covid-19 had mild infections and neither of them needed hospitalization, it said.

"As of this moment, there are no grounds to believe that the hybrid variant causes more severe infections and is more contagious," Rospotrebnadzor said.

The hybrid belongs to the non-dominant lineages and has no significant influence on the epidemiological situation either in St. Petersburg or in Moscow, Rospotrebnadzor said. According to it, the epidemiological situation in both cities is similar to the one across the country and is characterized with the intensive spreading of Covid-19BA.4/BA.5 sub-lineages with the prevalence of BA.5.

Hybrids are not unique, they are characteristic of many viruses and serve as an evolutionary adaptive mechanism, Rospotrebnadzor said. Covid-19 hybrid variants have been reported from Europe, the United States and Latin America before but have not widely spread in the human population.

"The recent reports on the detection of a hybrid variant in Russia referred to a U.S. geneticist." Rospotrebnadzor said.

"We have noticed the keen attention of U.S. scientists to the epidemiological situation in Russia. We recommend that the colleagues concentrate on what is happening in their own country, considering that the Covid-19 situation in the United States remains quite tense. The VGARus system used by Russia to monitor the variability of Covid-19 strains allows it to rapidly detect the emergence and transmissions of new coronavirus variants in the national territory and to give an effective response based on aggregated data," it said.

There have been media reports with the reference to U.S. researcher Dmitry Pruss, who said that a new hybrid of Covid-19 Omicron and Delta variants had been found in Russia. In his words, "the Russian Deltacron" was detected in the latest upload of genomic data from St. Petersburg. None of the countries but Russia has recorded the hybrid to date.