Deltracron COVID variant: Will deltacron get a new name?

The deltacron variant — a new COVID-19 variant that combines the omicron and delta variants — might not exist for much longer, as health experts could change the name in the future.

Driving the news: Dr. John Swartzberg, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of California Berkeley, told KRON4-TV that the “deltacron” variant could get a new name in the future as the World Health Organization continues to monitor it.

What they’re saying: “It sounds pretty ominious if you take the worst aspects of delta, which was a more serious illness, and you combine it with the worst aspects of omicron which is very transmissible then you have something that sounds pretty scary,” Swartzberg told KRON4-TV.

• “There is absolutely no evidence that this new recombinant virus has those qualities at all.”

Catch up quick: The World Health Organization confirmed the new coronavirus variant last week in deltacron.

• The new variant appears to be a combination of the delta variant and the omicron variant, as I reported for Deseret News.

What they’re saying: “We have not seen any change in the epidemiology with this recombinant. We haven’t seen any change in severity. But there are many studies that are underway,” WHO COVID-19 technical lead Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said in a press briefing Wednesday.

The bottom line: William Lee, the chief science officer at Helix, told USA Today that the new variant may not amount to much long-term.

• “The fact that there is not that much of it, that even the two cases we saw were different, suggests that it’s probably not going to elevate to a variant of concern level,” Lee said.