Overview of coronavirus variants: Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, omicron – SME.sk

GENEVA. The World Health Organization (WHO) has explained why naming a new variant of the coronavirus she skipped two letters of the Greek alphabet.

One is easily interchangeable with the English word “new” and the other is identical to the common surname in English, said Tarik Jašarević, a spokesman for the organization.

They skipped two Greek letters

While the WHO on Friday listed variant B.1.1.529 as worrying and assigned it a Greek letter omicron, the letter n has already appeared in the media.

There was later speculation on the social network why the organization skipped two Greek letters, Reuters reported.

The WHO has begun to name the various variants of the new coronavirus according to the Greek alphabet at the end of May.

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Easier communication

The aim was to simplify the names for public communication and at the same time avoid stigmatizing the individual countries in which the new variants were first discovered.

For example, the Indian government has criticized the designation of the Indian variant for variant B.1.617.2, which was revealed by medics for the first time last year in this Asian country.

To date, the WHO has identified five concerns of coronavirus variants: alpha, beta, gamma, delta a omicron.

One step lower are the monitored variants, which include lambda or mi.

According to the Greek letters, some other variants have also been named, but these do not meet the criteria for inclusion in these two categories.

Similarity with the name of the Chinese president

The next letter on my line was supposed to be the next letter, followed by csi. However, the WHO used omicron.

This has led to speculation that the letter ksi has not escaped due to fears of anger from the Chinese president, The New York Times wrote.

The WHO follows the English transcripts of the Greek alphabet, which are written “nu” and “xi” in the case of the omitted pair. The English transliteration of the name of the Chinese head of state, Xi Jinping, is “Xi Jinping”.

A WHO spokesman explained on Saturday that the Greek letter n (in English nu) is very easily interchangeable in pronunciation with the English term “new”, which means new in Slovak.

And the term ksi (“xi” in English), he said, was not used by the organization because it is a common surname in some regions.

He added that the WHO is trying to name diseases that do not offend any “cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”

In the past, viruses were often named after the places where they were first discovered, Reuters reported earlier, recalling the example of the Ebola hemorrhagic fever, which is named after the Congolese river of the same name, where paramedics first discovered the virus.

However, this approach can be detrimental to individual places and can be inaccurate, as in the case of the 1918 pandemic of the so-called Spanish flu, the origin of which is unknown, the agency noted.

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