[user104658]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

absolutely not. I lived in Cyprus for several years, i know first hand what it's like. It's not to be trusted until verified. Bear in mind that the UK has had delta and omicron coexisting for the last 6 weeks or more with millions infected and there have been no examples of the same here.

Viruses are self-replicating, they don't "breed" so if this new strain has traits of both, it's a coincidental evolution of one of the strains not a "combination" of the two strains. Most likely would be a Delta variant with some spike mutations that make it spread more like Omicron.

An interesting tidbit I read a month or so ago is that previous mutations had been sort of linear (one leading to the next) but Omicron actually seemed to be an offshoot of early 2020 Covid (pre-"Kent"/Alpha), a totally different evolutionary pathway to Delta. Basically they're not parent/child or siblings, but rather distant cousins that share the same great-great-grandparent. I don't know if that held up to further study but it would go some way to explaining the apparently quite different symptoms.