A new variant of COVID-19 has been detected in Australia, which is a hybrid of two previous strains.
Deltacron has been described as mixture of the Delta variant, which spread through Australia last year, and the Omicron variant, which led to high case loads across the nation over the Christmas holidays and into this year.
The new variant was initially detected in February in the north of France and has been steadily popping up around the world, particularly in Europe and the United States.
Confirmation that the first Deltacron case in Australia was reported by New South Wales on Friday and on Saturday Queensland Health said "a number of cases" had also been detected here through genomic sequencing.
Here is what we know so far.
What do we know so far?
Infectious diseases expert Paul Griffin said most variants of concern have come through "spontaneous changes" or "errors when the virus has been reproducing".
"That's what we've seen with the emergence of Delta and, subsequently, Omicron," Associate Professor Griffin said.
Deltacron, however, occurred through a different process known as "recombination".
Dr Griffin said that, while the new variant looked like Delta, it acted more like Omicron.
He said the new variant likely had a protein spike of the Omicron strain.
"Given that's what accounts for the majority of the properties of the virus, that's why this is behaving a lot more like Omicron," he said.
"In some ways, that's good news, because we know Delta was perhaps more severe in terms of the illness that it caused, but we know that Omicron is likely more infectious."
Are all Deltacron cases the same?
While it first cropped up in France, Dr Griffin said there was probably more than one version of the variant spreading globally.
"It does look, increasingly, like there's two different Deltacrons," he said.
"One that arose in France and has spread throughout some European countries, and the one that likely arose in the United States."
It was unknown which had shown up in Australia, but Dr Griffin said the two have "very similar properties".
Should you be worried?
In short, no more than you should have been already.
Dr Griffin said Deltacron was unlikely to "change the landscape all that much", at least not for now.
However, that didn't mean it should be ignored.
Dr Griffin said the same principles of control that applied to any COVID-19 variant would also be important to control Deltacron.
He said the longer anyone remains unvaccinated, including children, the more chances there was for danger.
"The more people [who] remain susceptible to this virus, the more opportunities it has to spread and reproduce and for those errors that give rise to new variants to happen spontaneously [and] for recombination events to occur," he said.
"The best way of controlling this is to get as many people vaccinated as possible."
