Omicron, Delta recombinant hints emergence of supervirus, expert warns; explains key features of next COVID variant
recombinant variant that's mostly delta but contains the spike protein of omicron. "So a good chunk of the virus' spike protein is omicron but the body of the virus is still delta," Nguyen says. “From the variant’s perspective, it has the best of worlds." Health officials, including those at the World Health Organization, are watching these hybrid variants closely.
Because they demonstrate how the virus can take its most successful parts and combine them quickly into a supervirus. This process is called recombination, and it's how dangerous strains of flu are made, the NPR article also said.
Experts also explained that recombination could be the reason for the emergence of COVID-19 itself. Scientists at the University of Glasgow published a study last month that indicates an animal in the Wuhan seafood market could have been co-infected with two coronaviruses at the same time – and that these two viruses recombined, just like omicron and delta are doing right now, to generate the initial version. "You know, early on in the pandemic, we were all expecting SARS-CoV-2 to not mutate too much," Scott Nguyen says. "But this virus has surprised us at every corner.
So I think these recombinant variants provide some interesting clues to how this virus is going to evolve next" – and just how quickly the next variant of concern may appear.
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India
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Brazil
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