The World Health Organization wants us not to name coronavirus variants from countries

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Monday that it will in the future add Greek letters to the current names of the various types of coronavirus to make them easier to identify, MTI wrote.

In its statement, the WHO wrote that in order to facilitate pronunciation and annotation, the Greek letter designation was chosen.

At the same time, I want to avoid people and the media using the terms “stigmatize and discriminate”. For the sake of simplicity, the variants are named so far after the countries in which the first cases were reported (such as the Indian, British, South African, and Brazilian variant).

Agence France-Presse indicated that attacks on people of Asian descent have increased in the United States since the start of the epidemic, and that former US President Donald Trump is responsible for the outbreak. Trump has often described the coronavirus as a Chinese virus or the kung flu spun with a word game. Even Washington Congress passed a law to be able to stem the wave of hate.

Experts will continue to use earlier symbols based on Latin letters and numbers, but scientific names will be replaced by Greek letters in the WHO’s daily publications. The World Health Organization is also encouraging national authorities and the media to adopt the new names.

• The variant B.1.1.7 detected in the United Kingdom is henceforth alpha
• B.1.351 South African variant to Beta
• The Brazilian P.1 variant will be called Gamma.
• Version B.1.617.2 of the B.1.617 variant, which is destructive in India and appeared in many countries around the world, is named kappa, while version B.1.617.1 is named kappa.