Probably this is another package down the line of what future learners will have to embrace in the usage of Greek letters in various science courses—hopefully, it won’t have to be cram work.
In 2019, a virus was first discovered in Wuhan City, China before it fast spread to other parts of the world and declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2020.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus commonly known as Covid-19 or Coronavirus has proven to mutate into different variants.
According to WHO, upon discovery, some variants are classified as Variants of Interest depending on the transmissibility rate, disease severity, immune escape among others.
They may evolve to Variants of Concern due to an increase in transmissibility and decrease in the effectiveness of public health measures.
However, researchers say that equity access to vaccines by countries across the world can mitigate the virus mutation threat, and hopefully end the pandemic, at some point.
When the Coronavirus mutated into new variants, they were referred to after places of origin causing community tension and xenophobia in some countries.
It was until May 2021 that the WHO decided to use Greek alphabets to designate variants of Covid-19 after considering the racialization and ethnicization that revolved around the variants when named after the place of origin.
The body convened an expert group of partners from around the world to do so, including experts who are part of existing naming systems, nomenclature and virus taxonomic experts, researchers and national authorities.
"These (Greek) labels do not replace existing scientific names (those assigned by GISAID, Nextstrain and Pango), which convey important scientific information and will continue to be used in research,” states WHO on its website.
"While they have their advantages, these scientific names can be difficult to say and recall, and are prone to misreporting. As a result, people often resort to calling variants by the places where they are detected, which is stigmatising and discriminatory.”
The Sunday edition of German daily newspaper, Rheinpfalz am Sonntag, ran a front page headline: "The virus from Africa is with us," above a picture of a Black woman and child.
The newspaper apologized after it was called out, but the damage had been done.
To avoid this and to simplify public communications, WHO encourages national authorities, media outlets and others to adopt the designated Greek letters.
Some of the better-known variants, such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta were in category of Variants of Concern while other Variants of Interest were named Lambda and Mu.
The recent highly transmissible variant causing reinfections that emerged in South Africa, B.1.1.529, was named after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet, Omicron.
The Omicron variant was first reported by the WHO in November 24 as VoC, and was reported in Rwanda on December 15, 2021 and has caused the first-ever highest daily infections since the outbreak of the pandemic.
But two alphabets "Nu” and "Xi” were skipped to avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups, according to WHO officials.
"‘Nu’ is too easily confounded with ‘new’,” said Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesman, and "Xi was not used because it is a common last name.”
According to different commentators, the Greek letter ‘Xi’ was seen as too close to the name of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and could again cause anti-Asian sentiment, as was previously the case before this approach.
Fortunately or scandalously there are nine more letters in the Greek alphabet. The next one is Pi.