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Lambda, Mu ... Omicron? Why the WHO skipped ‘Nu’ and ‘Xi’ to name latest coronavirus variant
- The health body says one is confusing and the other is a common last name
- One critic says the decision reflects the WHO’s fear of the Communist Party
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Going by the Greek alphabet, the next names should have been “Nu” and “Xi” but the WHO skipped them and went on to call the latest coronavirus variant “Omicron”.
But why? Was it to avoid similarities with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s name?
Before the World Health Organization named Omicron as a variant “of concern” on Friday, the last identified variant was the Mu variant, named after the 12th out of 24 letters in the Greek alphabet.
Nu and Xi, the 13th and 14th letters, were next in line.
But in a statement to Associated Press on Saturday, the WHO said: “‘Nu’ is too easily confounded with ‘new’, and ‘Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name.”
It said its “best practices for naming disease suggest avoiding causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups”.
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