COVID-19:How variants are named?

Category : Education | Sub Category : Education Posted on 2021-11-30 12:41:56

The WHO has identified five VOCs and eight variants of interest (VOI). Since May 2021, they have been named after the letters of the Greek alphabet starting with Alpha.

According to this, the next assigned letters were supposed to be Nu then Xi but according to the WHO, “Nu is too easily confounded with ‘new’ and Xi was not used because it is a common surname.”

Instead, the 15th letter, Omicron, was used.