are you worried about COVID variant

Welcome to Express Health's Q&A

Scientists have discovered a new variant of coronavirus which is a hybrid of the Delta and Omicron strains, Deltacron. Denis Kinane, a world leading immunologist and founder of Cignpost diagnostics, revealed how the UK should react. What is Deltacron - should we be worried?  The main elements of the Deltacron variant are derived from Delta, but its ‘spike protein’, which allows the virus to gain entry to human cells, comes from the Omicron variant. In terms of being ‘worried’, this is perhaps not the best stance to take. Caution is perhaps a better approach than worry or fear: measured approaches are more conducive to a viable strategy going forward. In addition, we are noting with our current ‘presumably omicron’ testing, what appears to be a dichotomy in patient response, some have high viral load and infectivity for approximately six days and others still have high viral load and infectivity after 10 days. Much of this variation could be due to genetic variation among subjects but could also be due to viral variance. Are the symptoms different from other variants? At the moment lots of signs and symptoms have been reported, none majorly consistently and no increase in immune or vaccine evasion, infectivity or virulence (disease severity caused by the virus) have been reported, although it is early. This underlines the need for testing surveillance and sequencing to be available. There have been some notable other symptoms, however, such as runny nose, scratchy throat and vertigo which have not typically been associated with Covid strains until now. How can we continue to detect and protect ourselves from new variants that begin to circulate? While free Covid testing is coming to an end across the UK, it is the fundamental way in which we can protect ourselves. While the return to a world that resembles ‘pre Covid’ is taking shape, testing is still a vital element to take forward if we are to identify an uptick in transmission. If individuals feel more comfortable to continue wearing masks, then they should do so, and remain sensible and vigilant if they have knowingly come into close contact with an individual who has tested positive.