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Markets fell on Friday, hopes of taming the coronavirus waned, and a new term entered the pandemic lexicon: Omicron.
The Covid-19 variant, which originated in South Africa, got its name from the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet.
naming system, announced by the World Health Organization in May.It makes public communication about the variants easier and less confusing, the agency and experts said.
For example, the variant that originated in India is not popularly known as B.1.617.2. Rather, it is known as Delta, the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet.
According to the World Health Organization, there are currently seven “types of concern” or “types of concern” and each has a Greek letter. tracking page.
Some other variants with Greek letters do not reach these levels of classification, and WHO also omitted two letters just before Omicron – “Nu” and “Xi” – leading to speculation as to whether “Xi” was avoided in homage to Chinese president Xi. jinping
“‘Nu’ is very easily confused with ‘new’,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said on Saturday. “And because ‘Xi’ is a common surname, it was not used.”
He added that the agency’s best practices for naming diseases recommend avoiding “insulting any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic group.”
Some of the more well-known variants, such as Delta, have become a worrying variant. Others in this category were named Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. Others that arose and were variants of interest were called Lambda and Mu. Other Greek letters were used for variants that did not meet these thresholds, but the only letters skipped were Nu and Xi.
WHO promoted the naming system as simple and accessible, as opposed to the scientific names of variants that “can be difficult to say and remember and are prone to misreporting.”
Some researchers agree.
A virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, Dr. Angela Rasmussen said she did many interviews with journalists before the Greek naming system was announced this year, and she encountered confusing statements about this year. B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variants. They are now known as Alpha, which originated in the UK, and Beta, which originated in South Africa.
“It makes talking about it really cumbersome when you’re constantly using definitions of an alphabet variant,” he said. “Ultimately, people call it the UK variant or the South African variant.”
Dr. Rasmussen said this was another big reason WHO switched to the Greek naming system: “The old naming convention was unfair to the people with whom the virus originated. The agency described the practice of identifying variants based on where they were detected as “stigmatizing and discriminatory.”
Dr. Rasmussen said the practice of naming viruses by region has also been historically misleading. Ebola, for example, is named for a river that is very far from where the virus originated.
From the very beginning of the pandemic, I remember people saying, ‘We called it the Spanish flu. Why don’t we call it the Wuhan coronavirus?’” Dr. Rasmussen. “The Spanish flu didn’t come from Spain. We don’t know where it came from, but it’s very likely that it came from the United States,” he said.
WHO encouraged national authorities and media outlets to adopt the new labels. They do not replace technical names that convey important information to scientists and will continue to be used in research.
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