Photo = Getty Image Bank (regardless of the article)
As the Omicron pandemic passed its peak and turned to a downward trend, the possibility of the emergence of a new mutant virus emerged as the biggest variable in future quarantine policy.
According to the health authorities on the 29th, BA.2 (stealth omicron), a subspecies of Omicron mutation, has already established itself as the dominant species in Korea, and ‘Deltacron’, a recombination mutation of delta and omicron, has occurred overseas such as France and Denmark. are doing There are still few cases of delta clones and it seems unlikely that it will lead to another pandemic, but if the new mutation epidemic and the period of reduced immunity overlap, the damage may increase, raising concerns.
Jung Eun-kyung, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, “The possibility of a new corona 19 mutation is very high at any time.” The mutation that Chung gave as an example on this day was ‘deltacrone’, and on the 9th, the World Health Organization (WHO) formalized the case.
According to the ‘Weekly Health and Disease’ data prepared by the sample analysis team of the Central Quarantine Countermeasures Headquarters (Bangdaebon) diagnostic and analysis team, delta clones are classified into six types according to the detailed system and occurrence region as of March 13. Among them, a representative mutation is a recombination of the delta sublineage AY.4 and the omicron sublineage BA.2. In addition, between November of last year and February of this year, two types of deltacrones were confirmed in the United States (7 cases and 1 case each) and one type (7 cases) in Australia.
Two different types of deltacrones (34 and 3 respectively) were also reported in the UK. Deltacron was also confirmed in Brazil (2 cases) and Thailand (76 cases), health authorities in each country said. Recently, in Israel, recombination mutations between the Omicron sublineages BA.1 and BA.2 have been reported.
Recombinant mutations such as delta clones have not yet been identified in Korea. From the name alone, the combination of delta and omicron properties can be seen as a dangerous mutation, but experts believe that it is unlikely to cause major problems.
Professor Kim Woo-joo of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Korea University Guro Hospital said, “The SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates frequently. Professor Kim said, “In general, mutations occur in a direction that the contagious power increases and the severity decreases, but there are cases where the transmission power and severity rise together like a delta, so that prediction is not always correct. Therefore, monitoring is necessary, and we need to prepare for mutation through a rigorous evaluation of the last quarantine policy, which increased the scale by loosening quarantine measures during the spread of the epidemic,” he explained.
Jang Ji-min, Guest Reporter at Hankyung.com newsinfo@hankyung.com
ⓒ Hankyung.com, unauthorized reprinting and redistribution prohibited
