Health rules out deltacron case in Amapá and investigates infection in Pará

After genomic sequencing carried out by Fiocruz, it was found this Friday (18) that the case under investigation in Amapá is not a deltacron infection.

In fact, the person was infected with two viruses, with the delta and omicron variants, and not with a recombinant variant such as deltacron.

The case of Pará is still under investigation. The information was confirmed by members of the Ministry of Health who follow the theme.

“After analysis by the Fiocruz Reference Laboratory, the case notified by the state of Amapá was discarded for the recombination of variants called deltacron”, said the press office, in a note.

The Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, said on Tuesday (15) that there were two cases of deltacron in the country. Hours later, he said they were under investigation.

“Guys, clarifying: the two Deltacron cases I mentioned earlier are still under investigation and were reported to the @minsaude by the States. The total sequencing of the virus should be completed in the coming days by Fiocruz’s national reference laboratory,” he said in a post on social media.

According to data from the Cievs network (Center for Strategic Information on Health Surveillance), which brings together the country’s surveillance system, the case of Amapá is a 34-year-old male, resident of Santana. He has a complete vaccination schedule.

The case of Pará is a 26-year-old woman, resident of Afuá. She also has a complete vaccination schedule.

The recombinant virus has been circulating since January in several regions of France and there are detections of similar genomes in Denmark and the Netherlands. Such an event is not, at least so far, a cause for concern.

In a Twitter post on March 8, Maria Van Kerkhove, epidemiologist and technical lead at the WHO (World Health Organization) for Covid-19, stated that this type of recombination is expected with the intense circulation of the omicron and delta variants. and that the WHO team is following up and discussing the matter.

At the end of February, the topic had already been discussed by experts in a WHO question and answer session. At the time, Kerkhove reassured people about recombination events and explained that this process is basically a joining of “pieces” of one variant with “pieces” of another.

“I don’t want to scare people with the idea of ​​recombination,” Kerkhove said on Feb. 22. “Maybe we’ll start to see recombinations. That could happen, but it could be a reflection of better surveillance.”

The Minister of Health took the opportunity to say that there is no reason for concern.

“Anyway, there is no cause for concern. The WHO classified Deltacron only as a monitoring variant (Vum) and did not consider it as a variant of interest or concern, as was the case with Ômicron and Delta, for example,” he said. on the social networks.