Thailand Ministry of Health reports 27,024 new COVID-19 cases and an additional 82 deaths since yesterday. The ministry also announced an additional 23,721 patients recovered from the COVID-19 virus.
Department of Medical Sciences (DMS) reported 73 cases of the deltacron strain. DMS director-general Supakit Sirilak said Deltacron was found in the ministry’s weekly genomic sequencing. The samples have already been submitted to GISAID for confirmation. All the cases have already fully recovered.
The omicron and delta variants have combined to create a new strain. This is only possible if both are circulating at the same time. The samples were taken from December of last year and early January of this year. This was the time when both variants were causing a surge in cases.
“The full genome sequencing showed the 73 cases fit the profile of Deltacron. This usually happens when the Delta and Omicron variants are spreading. The samples weren’t from the past one to two weeks and most were from December last year and January this year when the two variants were spreading,” he said.
World Health Organization (WHO) is monitoring the strain but there are no signs it is more contagious or deadlier. There is also no suggestion that it can evade immunity from vaccinations.
“There’s no need to panic. If cases of the Delta variant drop further, the chances of the two strains combining also falls. However, if Deltacron is highly transmissible, it may replace Omicron. But there is no sign of that and there is no information about its virulence,” he said.
There are about 2000 samples from March 12-18. Only one case demonstrated a sequence like that of the delta variant. 406 are from the BA.1 omicron strain and 1479 were BA.2 or deltacron sequence. BA.3 is not yet found in the Kingdom.