Many Delmicrons Say The Latest Variant Of COVID-19, What Do Members Say?

Photo illustration (Source: Antara)

JAKARTA - Health science expert from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia (FKUI) Prof. Tjandra Yoga Aditama said the term Delmicron is not a scientific name for the latest variant of SARS-Cov-2 that causes COVID-19.

"This term seems to originate a lot from the description of Dr Shashank Joshi, a member of the SatGas/taskforce from the state of Maharashtra in India. The capital city of Maharashtra is Mumbai or Bombay, a trading city and also the center of the Bollywood film industry," said Tjandra Yoga Aditama in a written statement. received in Jakarta, Sunday afternoon, December 26.

He said the authorities in India including prominent ones such as the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have never provided any information about the presence or absence of Delmicron, nor has there been any statement from any official organization in India.

"There's also no explanation from other experts that mentions Delmicron," he added.

The former Director of WHO Southeast Asia who lived in India from 2015 to 2020 said the term Delmicron so far was only the opinion of a doctor who happened to be interviewed by one of the media. Delmicron is not in the form of scientific writing.

"So far, it has been stated that this is not a new variant, but patients who are infected with the Delta variant and the Omicron variant, so it is suspected that the infection is fast and the complaints are not mild, but again there is no clear scientific evidence about this," he said.

According to Tjandra, the naming of the COVID-19 variant by the World Health Organization (WHO) is based on the Greek alphabet.

"So there shouldn't be a Delmicron term in the WHO's Variant of Concern (VoC) or Variant of Interest (VoI) classification," he said.