To avoid stigmatisation and simplify discussion, the World Health Organization has announced a new naming system for variants of the COVID virus with important mutations.
In an attempt to remove the country-associated stigma from the emergence of a variant, each will receive a name from the Greek alphabet.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s coronavirus lead, said that “no country should be stigmatised for detecting and reporting variants”.
She added that these new labels for VOI/VOC are “simple, easy to say and remember and are based on the Greek alphabet, a system that was chosen following wide consultation and a review of several potential systems”.
In the new naming system, B.1.17., the variant first reported in Kent, England is designated Alpha, B.1351, the variant originating in South Africa is called Beta, the Brazilian variant P.1 is now Gamma and the B.1617.2 variant first reported in India is Delta. The variants of interest run from Epsilon to Kappa. The WHO has provided a table detailing the different names.
These Greek letters will not replace existing scientific names, though there are only 24 letters. If more variants are identified for naming, a new naming scheme will be announced, Ms Van Kerkhove told US-based website STAT News.
“We’re not saying replace B.1.1.7, but really just to try to help some of the dialogue with the average person,” she told the US-based website. “So that in public discourse, we could discuss some of these variants in more easy-to-use language.”
On Monday, a scientific adviser for the UK government said the country was now in the early stages of a third wave of coronavirus infections, in part driven by the Delta variant, which had emerged in India.
It is thought to spread more quickly than the UK’s Alpha variant, which was responsible for the surge in cases in the UK over the winter.
Vietnam has reported what appears to be a combination of those two variants. On Saturday, the country’s health minister stated that it could spread quickly through the air and described it as “very dangerous”.
Source: BBC News
