Evidence of co-infections during Delta and Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variants co-circulation through prospective screening and sequencing

Abstract

This work demonstrates that SARS-CoV-2 Delta/Omicron co-infections are not rare in high virus co-circulation periods. Moreover, co-infections can further lead to genetic recombination which may generate new chimeric variants with unpredictable epidemic or pathogenic properties that could represent a serious health threat.