New COVID Variant Named 'Omicron' To Avoid Displeasing Xi Jinping

Officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) skipped two letters of the Greek alphabet when naming the latest COVID variant in order to avoid “stigmatizing” China, and perhaps its premier Xi Jinping, Paul Nuki reported for UK’s The Telegraph.

Photo Insert: The letters Xi were skipped to avoid stigma.

A WHO source confirmed the letters Nu and Xi had been deliberately avoided. Nu had been skipped to avoid confusion with the word “new” and Xi had been ducked to “avoid stigmatizing the region,” they said.

Since May, new variants of Sars-COV-2 have been given sequential names from the Greek alphabet under a naming convention devised by an expert committee at the WHO.

The system was chosen to prevent variants becoming known by the names of the places where they were first detected, which can be stigmatizing and discriminatory. Initially, most commentators assumed the B.1.1.529 variant, which was first found in Botswana, would be given the name Nu - the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet - but plays on the word “new” immediately spread across the internet.

Then on Friday evening, after a meeting of the Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE), the WHO announced that two letters would in fact be skipped and the new variant named Omicron.

All pandemics are inherently political in nature, and the decision to avoid the use of Xi is perhaps not surprising given the diplomatic optics. Nevertheless, news of the change and its explanation caused a stir and some hilarity on social media.

“In a late move, Greece asks for a wider review of the overall naming regime, given the policy of avoiding stigmatizing regions,” one Twitter user wrote.

On Saturday the WHO media office was giving out a slightly adjusted reasoning. Dr Margaret Harris of the WHO told the New York Post: “[For] Nu the reasoning was people would get confused thinking it was the new variant, rather than a name. And XI because it’s a common surname and we have agreed [to] naming rules that avoid using place names, people’s names, animal, etc. to avoid stigma.”

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic