The World Health Organization has skipped two letters of the Greek alphabet, Nu and Xi, when naming Omicron, the newly identified coronavirus variant.

The WHO has followed the Greek alphabet when naming variants of COVID-19 and the next two letters in line were Nu and Xi. However, WHO has prudently skipped the two letters as Nu can be confused with New and naming a coronavirus variant Xi would have caused offence as it resembles the name of China’s President Xi Jinping.

After speculation over the issue on social media, the WHO has itself provided an explanation: “‘Nu’ is too easily confounded with ‘new,’ and ‘Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name,” the WHO said, adding that the agency’s “best practices for naming disease suggest avoiding ‘causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.’”

Those best practices were outlined in a May 2015 guidelines issued by the WHO.

This is the first time the WHO has skipped letters when naming coronavirus variants. Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta are all currently “variants of concern” like Omicron. Others, such as Lambda, Kappa and Mu, have been used to name the less serious “variant of interest” category. NU and Xi would have logically followed Mu.

The Omicron variant has as many as 30 spike proteins compared with just two for the Delta variant and hence considered more dangerous.

The WHO said that preliminary evidence “suggests an increased risk of reinfection” compared to other variants of concern. However, scientists are still in the process of researching exactly what the genetic changes mean, to know if the variant is more transmissible or dangerous. So far, there is no indication the variant causes more severe disease.

Also read:  What you need to know about the new deadlier Omicron variant of COVID-19