KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 11 — While the world grapples with the surge in the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus, scientists believe another super-strain has been detected.
Named Deltacron, the new strain combines the names of the two earlier variants – Delta and Omicron.
Though it is still too early to say how Deltacron is going to take on the world, the new name drew dismay from netizens overwhelmed by pandemic fatigue.
Twitter user Srikanth Renikunta using account name @SriRenikunta tweeted “Covid morphing into a new variant every three months” showing concern over the evolving virus.
Others were more creative, as they saw the variant nomenclature sounding similar to the characters in American sci-fi ‘Transformers’.
Arif Farimin with the ‘reefjrx’ Twitter handle tweeted: omicron, deltacron…coming soon..megatron?, while Alyaa Ramlan @alyaaramlan added ‘Deltacron – rasa macam dalam never ending transformer movies’ (Deltacron – looks like never ending transformer movies) .
Iqbal@shafielqbal tweeted: ‘Omicron, deltacron sampailah decepticon datang dengan ketuanya megatron’ (Deltacron continues until decepticon uprising arrives with its leader megatron).
Ikhwan@JatIkhwan tweeted: So sekarang varian covid boleh bergabung ek? Dah ada deltacron, gabungan delta dan omicron. Antara simptom baru varian ini ialah menyebabkan rambut gugur. (So now we have COVID variant which can combine? We have deltacron, combination of delta and omicron. Among the symptoms of this new variant is making the hair fall).
Smile Guy34@smileguy34 tweeted: Nampaknya Delta + Omicron=Deltacron. Autobot pun tak dapat kalahkan mereka. Decepticon pun tewas. nampaknya kena panggil Avengers. (Looks like Delta + Omicron=Deltacron. Even Autobot cant defeat them. Even Decepticon gets defeated. Looks like have to call Avengers.)
Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus, called the strain “deltacron,” because of its omicron-like genetic signatures within the delta genomes, according to a report by Bloomberg.
