The American epidemiologist, WHO technical director for COVID-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, suggested that the Greek alphabet for the name of the new variants of the COVID-19 coronavirus would not be enough and they would begin to be named after the constellations. She told about this in an interview with the British newspaper Telegraf.
The WHO began using the Greek alphabet for the names of coronavirus variants in May this year to move away from the practice of naming them by place of origin. According to the organization, the previous system could lead to discrimination of countries and territories where the strain was found.
It was noted that new names would be assigned to options of interest or concern. For three months, WHO has named five variants of COVID-19 in Greek letters.
According to Kerkhove, in case the 24 letters of the alphabet were not enough, the option with the names of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses was also considered, but it had already been abandoned.
Earlier, Rospotrebnadzor talked about ways to determine the strain of coronavirus in an infected person. This can be done exclusively by sequencing – decoding the genome of the virus or its fragment (S-protein gene) in laboratory conditions. This will allow you to determine the presence of key mutations – and then identify the strain itself.
