WHO's new naming system for COVID Variants

  • The World Health Organization (WHO) announced a new naming system that it devised for so-called variants of interest and variants of concern, the forms of the SARS-CoV-2 virus with important mutations. 
HOW AND WHY?
  • Each variant will be given a name from the Greek alphabet, in a bid to both simplify the public discussion and to strip some of the stigma from the emergence of new variants. 
  • A country may be more willing to report it has found a new variant if it knows the new version of the virus will be identified as Rho or Sigma, rather than with the country’s name, Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s coronavirus lead, said.
  • A plan to simplify the nomenclature of the variants has been in the works for several months, led by the WHO’s Virus Evolution Working Group.

THE NAMES

  • Letters of the Greek alphabet to refer to the variants. 
  • Under the new scheme, B.1.1.7, the variant first identified in Britain, will be known as Alpha.
  • B.1.351 (South Africa): Beta. 
  • P.1 (Brazil): Gamma. 
  • B.1.671.2 (India): Delta.




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