New Omicron Subtype BA.2 is Spreading Quickly

For the moment, French Health Minister Olivier Veran is not too concerned about BA.2. "What we know for now is that [it] more or less corresponds to the characteristics that we know of omicron," he told AFP.

Scientists concerned with possible omicron-delta recombination

Speaking with Deutschlandfunk public radio, German virologist Christian Drosten of Berlin's Charite University Hospital stressed that combining one of the two omicron variants with delta could, however, lead to the development of an even more dangerous virus. Omicron has certain mutations on its surface protein, the so-called spike protein, with which it can more easily evade the body's immune defenses.

Also read: New Study Says Omicron Variant Grows Faster in Airway Passages

This trait could become particularly dangerous through recombination, which "carries the spike protein of the omicron virus to continue to enjoy that immune advantage, but has the rest of the genome of the delta virus," said Drosten.

This would bring the strongest features of both variants together.

"There is such a thing, it has already been described, you have to fear that something like this could happen at the moment," Drosten warned.

A researcher in Cyprus recently reported a new variant that could be a recombination of both virus variants. However, the discovery of that "deltacron-variant" has not been widely accepted. Experts say the finding could also be attributed to contamination of samples in the lab.