SARS-COV-2 VARIANTS COULD BE NAMED AFTER STAR -WHO

Sun 08 August 2021:

Future variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, could be named after star constellations when Greek letters run out, Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) technical chief for COVID-19, told The Telegraph.

In late May, the WHO said that the strains of COVID-19 would be named with Greek letters in order to avoid associating them with certain territories and countries. There are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet.

This means coronavirus variants could be named after constellations such as Orion, Leo, Gemini and Aries.

Dr Van Kerkhove told the newspaper: “We will possibly run out of the Greek alphabet, but we’re already looking at the next series of names.

“We’re actually considering star constellations. We were going to go with Greek gods or goddesses, and I said please, please don’t make me say that publicly.”

The WHO is looking at proposals to make sure no one is upset with the names, she added.

She previously warned naming variants after where they are first identified can end up “stigmatising” a country or place.

Last year, she made a request for a naming system to avoid this happening.

Meanwhile, she claimed new variants which evade measures such as vaccines are a “real threat”.

Avoid stigmatization

The danger of stigmatization is also an issue the WHO has warned about since the early days of the pandemic when some politicians, most notably former President Donald Trump, would routinely refer to the virus as the “China virus” or the “Wuhan virus.” Trump said he used the terms “to be accurate” and maintained they were “not racist at all,” yet he continued to use them even after the WHO cautioned against language that can “perpetuate negative stereotypes or assumptions.”

Use of such language became widespread. In one study released in May, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco directly linked Trump’s first tweet about a “Chinese virus” to an exponential rise in anti-Asian language on Twitter.

Last month, Maria Van Kerkhove said, “No country should be stigmatized for detecting and reporting variants,” she wrote on Twitter. Under the WHO’s new naming system, the variant, known among scientists as B.1.617.2, is called the Delta variant.

The new system applies to two different classifications of variants — “variants of concern,” considered the most potentially dangerous, and second-level “variants of interest.”

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