He added that the agency’s best practices for naming diseases suggest avoiding “causing offense to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”Ĭoincidentally, I had recently learned something interesting about “omicron.” I wish I could remember my source-radio? podcast? audiobook? definitely some kind of audio-but it was unrelated to the pandemic, and it was a so-obvious-how-could-I-have-missed-it moment. “And ‘Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name.” “‘Nu’ is too easily confounded with ‘new,’” Tarik Jasarevic, a W.H.O. also skipped two letters just before Omicron - “Nu” and “Xi” - leading to speculation about whether “Xi” was avoided in deference to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. Some other variants with Greek letters do not reach those classification levels, and the W.H.O. ![]() Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here.There are now seven “variants of interest” or “variants of concern” and they each have a Greek letter, according to a W.H.O. It has also been speculated that Xi Jinping being the name of the paramount leader of China also had something to do with WHO’s decision. Xi, on the other hand, is a popular Chinese surname, though it is pronounced differently in Greek. Nu was skipped because it sounds too much like “new”. Why were Nu and Xi skipped?Īs per a CNN report, before Omicron and after Mu, the two letters Nu and Xi were skipped by WHO. However, it also sounds exactly like the word “pie”, something similar to which had caused the Greek alphabet “Nu” to be skipped in naming a Covid-19 variant. While all of the Greek alphabets are used in various scientific and mathematical equations, Pi also finds a mention in the film “Life of Pi,” which is, thankfully due to its subject matter, unlikely to be perceived as having predicted a Covid-19 variant. There are 9 more letters left after Omicron, including Pi. If this holds true, a Pi variant may well be on the horizon. But fortunately, Omicron seems comparatively less severe than other variants,” she said. There will be many waves, time and again. “We will have to learn to live with SARS-CoV-2 and its variants which will continue to emerge. She further cautioned that there will be many Covid waves “time and again”, according to news agency ANI. India’s top virologist Dr Gagandeep Kang is of the opinion that people should learn to live with the coronavirus and its variants as they will continue to emerge. It should depend on whether or not the next variant emerges, and if so, whether it becomes a VOC or not. So, could Pi trend in 2022 as Omicron did in 2021? Potentially. The variants of interest (VOI) are the relatively unknown Lambda and Mu. The currently designated variants of concern (VOC) are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron. What follows Omicron is perhaps the most popular of Greek alphabets, all thanks to math: Pi. What comes after Omicron and will it trend in 2022? The Greek alphabets are supposed to act as labels and do not replace the scientific names. This leads to people calling the variants by the name of the place where they originate, which can end up being stigmatising and discriminatory. The website states that scientific names can be difficult to recall and hence often lend themselves to misreporting. Experts around the world had convened to come to the decision. The WHO website states that Greek alphabets have been chosen to name Covid-19 variants as they are easy to say and remember. Why is WHO using Greek alphabets to name Covid-19 variants? The B.1.640.2 has not been identified in other countries so far or labelled a variant under investigation by the WHO. Scientists in France have now identified a new, much more mutated strain- named IHU B.1.640.2 variant. Among them were Epsilon, Iota and Lambda. CNN reported that Delta was followed by eight others who had fizzled out for the most part. The WHO has been using Greek alphabets to name Covid-19 variants, the one before Omicron having been termed the Delta variant. ![]() The variant is pronounced differently in both US and the UK. It was named by the World Health Organisation (WHO) after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. ‘Omicron’ comes from Middle English, from Greek o mikron, literally meaning ‘small o’. There were memes being made, Google searches on the pronunciation of the Greek letter Omicron, crypto tokens with the same name surging, bands called Omicron rising from obscurity and various doctored images floating around claiming this comic strip or that movie had “predicted” the variant. When the Omicron variant of Covid-19 first came to light, its etymology created quite a stir on social media.
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