The World Health Organization will now be using new labels of the COVID-19 variants through the Greek alphabet.
For instance, WHO calls the “UK variant” (B.1.1.7) “Alpha,” and the “South African variant” (B.1.351) is “Beta.”
“No country should be stigmatized for detecting and reporting variants,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19 response said in a tweet.
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The usage of Greek alphabet is easier and more practical for non-scientific audience according to WHO experts.
The P.1 variant, first detected in Brazil and designated a variant of concern in January, has been labeled “Gamma.”
The B.1.617.2 variant, first found in India and recently reclassified from a variant of interest to variant of concern, is “Delta.”
The SARS-COV2 can mutate over time leading to the birth of new variants. Health experts are renaming the variants in order to avoid discrimination from countries of origin.
Scientific names will “continue to be used in research,” Van Kerkhove tweeted.
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“While they have their advantages, these scientific names can be difficult to say and recall, and are prone to misreporting. As a result, people often resort to calling variants by the places where they are detected, which is stigmatizing and discriminatory,” the WHO statement added.
Some concerns were raised on the WHO decision to use the Greek alphabet in labelling the variants.
The decision will also make it more complicated since variants will have three potential names their scientific name, references based on where a variant was first identified and now, WHO’s Greek alphabet labeling. (TDT)
