DOC­TOR'S NOTE | AL JAZEERA

● Ex­perts say two vari­ants can cross over to form a re­com­bi­nant ver­sion of both vari­ants. Plus, get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed against both COVID-19 and in­fluen­za is the best way to pro­tect your­self from ‘Flurona’ ●

(AL JAZEERA) — Dur­ing the past week, my in­box has been flood­ed with mes­sages telling me a new COVID-19 vari­ant had been dis­cov­ered in Cyprus. Dubbed “Deltacron”, it was said to be re­spon­si­ble for a se­ries of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions in the coun­try.

I groaned at the thought of a new vari­ant and one that was said to be a com­bi­na­tion of the Delta and Omi­cron vari­ants sound­ed omi­nous. So, I de­cid­ed to do some dig­ging.

I dis­cov­ered that the news had first emerged on Jan­u­ary 7, when sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cyprus Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Biotech­nol­o­gy and Mol­e­c­u­lar Vi­rol­o­gy, led by Dr Leon­dios Kostrikis, claimed they had en­coun­tered a new vari­ant of the SARS-COV-2 virus. It had, they said, al­ready in­fect­ed at least 25 peo­ple. Ac­cord­ing to Dr Kostrikis, the vari­ant con­tained Omi­cron-like ge­net­ic sig­na­tures with­in Delta genomes – hence the name “Deltacron”.

Cyprus’s health min­is­ter, Michalis Had­ji­pan­de­las, was quick to point out that the new vari­ant was not some­thing to be con­cerned about at that point and that the se­quence had been sent to GI­SAID, an open ac­cess data­base that tracks de­vel­op­ments in the coro­n­avirus.

The dis­cov­ery of the new vari­ant start­ed trend­ing on Twit­ter, but ex­perts im­me­di­ate­ly ad­vised cau­tion. The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s (WHO) COVID-19 ex­pert, Dr Kru­ti­ka Kup­pal­li, ex­plained on Twit­ter that there was no such thing as “Deltacron” and that this was like­ly a “lab con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of Omi­cron frag­ments in a Delta spec­i­men”.

Oth­er sci­en­tists soon chimed in, and the over­rid­ing opin­ion was that this was not a new vari­ant but most like­ly a case of lab­o­ra­to­ry con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. The mu­ta­tions did not ap­pear to have a re­com­bi­nant pat­tern, they ex­plained, sug­gest­ing that Omi­cron and Delta had not merged their ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al, de­spite both cir­cu­lat­ing wide­ly.

Dr Tom Pea­cock, a vi­rol­o­gist at Im­pe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don, said some sort of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in the lab had like­ly led to an er­ror in the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the ge­net­ic se­quence and ex­plained that such er­rors were not un­com­mon in lab­o­ra­to­ries.

But while “Deltacron” may not be here, it is, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, pos­si­ble for two coro­n­avirus vari­ants that are cir­cu­lat­ing at the same time to cross over and form a re­com­bi­nant ver­sion of both vari­ants. If some­one is in­fect­ed with both vari­ants si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, then there is a small chance that both can in­fect a hu­man cell at the same time. This in­creas­es the chances of their ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al – RNA – be­com­ing mixed as they be­gin to mul­ti­ply and di­vide in­side the cells. In such a case, the new re­com­bi­nant vari­ant would in­clude ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al from both vari­ants.

Thank­ful­ly, this does not ap­pear to have hap­pened yet, but it is not im­pos­si­ble. The best way to re­duce the chances of vari­ants merg­ing to form re­com­bi­nant vari­ants is to dri­ve down com­mu­ni­ty in­fec­tion num­bers. The fo­cus has to go be­yond the scope of vac­cines on­ly, al­though vac­ci­nat­ing the world is in­cred­i­bly im­por­tant oth­er mea­sures are need­ed. A key step would be to en­sure there is clean air in­doors through fil­tra­tion and pu­rifi­ca­tion mea­sures. It will re­duce the num­ber of virus par­ti­cles in the air and de­crease the chances of peo­ple pick­ing it up. It will al­so help if all pub­lic health bod­ies across the world ro­bust­ly rec­om­mend the use of FFP2 or N95 masks which fil­ter out virus-con­tain­ing aerosol par­ti­cles more ef­fec­tive­ly than cloth or sur­gi­cal masks.

By im­ple­ment­ing these mea­sures we could see a clear drop in cir­cu­lat­ing virus and sig­nif­i­cant­ly lessen the chances of a re­com­bi­nant vari­ant form­ing.

‘Flurona’

Experts advise being vaccinated against both the flu and COVID-19, and say it is safe to take both jabs at the same time. [Illustration by Jawahir Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera]

Re­cent­ly, an­oth­er term merg­ing two words – flu and coro­n­avirus – has emerged. “Flurona” refers to cas­es where some­body is in­fect­ed with COVID-19 and flu at the same time. It is not a dis­tinct dis­ease, so while the names may have been merged in the term “Flurona”, the virus­es them­selves have not merged.

Flu and SARS-Cov-2 are two dis­tinct virus­es that cause two dif­fer­ent ill­ness­es, how­ev­er, be­cause of the way the virus­es are struc­tured and how they en­ter cells it is pos­si­ble to be in­fect­ed si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with both virus­es. If this hap­pens, the in­fect­ed per­son can have symp­toms of both but the virus­es them­selves will not merge to form a new virus.

In­stances of peo­ple be­ing in­fect­ed with flu and COVID-19 at the same time have been re­port­ed in Is­rael, the US, Hun­gary, the Philip­pines and Brazil. Cas­es of si­mul­ta­ne­ous in­fec­tions from both virus­es were re­port­ed as far back as Feb­ru­ary 2020, be­fore the term it­self was coined.

The fact that we are be­com­ing more aware of it now may be a re­sult of in­creased mix­ing. The lock­down re­stric­tions and so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures im­posed in many coun­tries dur­ing the ear­li­er stages of the pan­dem­ic led to low­er rates of flu and oth­er in­fec­tions. But as coun­tries have start­ed to open up in a bid to save their economies, even as the high­ly con­ta­gious Omi­cron vari­ant cir­cu­lates, the usu­al in­fec­tions such as colds and flu have be­gun cir­cu­lat­ing again.

While sci­en­tists know it is pos­si­ble to de­vel­op COVID-19 and in­fluen­za at the same time, it is too ear­ly to de­ter­mine ex­act­ly how sick “Flurona” could make peo­ple and it is al­so un­clear how much flu is cir­cu­lat­ing due to a lack of rou­tine test­ing for the virus. How­ev­er, we do know that old­er peo­ple and those with un­der­ly­ing health con­di­tions, such as di­a­betes, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease and con­di­tions which weak­en the im­mune sys­tem, are at greater risk from ei­ther virus.

Get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed against both is the best way to pro­tect your­self from “Flurona”. You will need both the flu and COVID-19 vac­cines as they are two dif­fer­ent virus­es and be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed against one will not pro­tect you from the oth­er. You can even have both at the same time, in fact that is what I did, hav­ing my COVID-19 boost­er in one arm and the flu jab in the oth­er.

Good News: IHU Vari­ant not spread­ing

IHU variant is named after Institut Hospitalier Universitaire, the place where the cases were first detected. [Illustration by Muaz Kory/Al Jazeera]

The vari­ant, which has been giv­en the name IHU or B.1.640.2 was first de­tect­ed in France at the end of last year and is known to have 46 sep­a­rate mu­ta­tions that are be­ing mon­i­tored for vac­cine es­cape and in­creased trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty.

The vari­ant has al­ready been de­fined by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) as a “vari­ant un­der mon­i­tor­ing”.

IHU vari­ant is named af­ter In­sti­tut Hos­pi­tal­ier Uni­ver­si­taire, the place where the cas­es were first de­tect­ed. The in­di­vid­ual who was iden­ti­fied as hav­ing the first case of this vari­ant was orig­i­nal­ly from Cameroon, and was said to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. In to­tal, 12 peo­ple were in­fect­ed with the IHU vari­ant and all of them had trav­elled from des­ti­na­tions linked to the in­dex case.

Sci­en­tists have be­gun look­ing at the mu­ta­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with B.1.640 and do not think it is like­ly to be as trans­mis­si­ble as Omi­cron and hence is un­like­ly to spread to greater num­bers of peo­ple as it will be out­com­pet­ed by Omi­cron eas­i­ly. While re­searchers were con­cerned about how the num­ber of mu­ta­tions would af­fect the vari­ant’s trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty, it hasn’t been de­tect­ed out­side the south­ern Alps re­gion of France and giv­en that it has been three months since the first case was de­tect­ed, this would sug­gest it is not high­ly trans­mis­si­ble. We are on­ly hear­ing about it now as the genome se­quenc­ing is sim­i­lar to Omi­cron.

Al­though they are con­tin­u­ing to mon­i­tor it for its abil­i­ty to evade the pro­tec­tion of­fered by vac­cines, the world’s fo­cus re­mains on Omi­cron, and right­ly so.

While some ex­perts have said that they know too lit­tle about the B.1.640 vari­ant to make as­sump­tions about the ex­act course it will take, oth­ers be­lieve that new vari­ants are to be ex­pect­ed as COVID-19 con­tin­ues to spread, this be­ing one of them – and not all of them will gain the kind of trac­tion seen with the Delta and the Omi­cron vari­ants.

WHO con­tin­ues to ask every­one to stay alert and take nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions to avoid be­ing in­fect­ed with COVID-19, many of us will be used to fol­low­ing this ad­vice by now: wear­ing a mask in in­door pub­lic spaces, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and reg­u­lar hand-wash­ing.

Al­so, it is im­por­tant that peo­ple take vac­ci­na­tions as soon as pos­si­ble to pro­tect them­selves from the virus.