Deltacron: Likely real, but don't panic

There’s recently been news of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant combining portions of the Delta and Omicron variants.

Having known that coronaviruses can recombine if different variants infect the same cell, this doesn’t come as a surprise to me. I even mentioned it in passing once; I wish I had publicly predicted it for bragging rights.

However, in this particular case, there’s some question as to whether the data are real or due to cross-contamination during sequencing.

In my estimation, due to the high levels of both Delta and Omicron circulating in the population, it’s likely that “Deltacron” recombinants are being produced. So even if this particular study wasn’t correct, they’re probably out there somewhere.

Still, I don’t think there’s cause for alarm. Most of Omicron’s advantage is in being able to escape the immune response targeted at earlier variants of SARS-CoV-2. Delta/Omicron recombinants wouldn’t be any better at this, and would be competing with the Omicron variant which is already highly prevalent.

My predictions:

Existence of Delta/Omicron recombinants widely accepted in the next 6 months: 90%

>5% of COVID cases in USA due to Delta/Omicron recombinants in the next 6 months: 10%

Update 2022-02-17: Just saw this cool bioRxiv about coronavirus recombination: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.03.429646v1

Update 2022-07-08: https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o792 resolves my first prediction as correct. BA.1 x AY.4 did not cause >5% of USA COVID-19 cases so my second prediction is also correct.