According to social media posts, the letters Nu and Xi were avoided.
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Did the WHO deliberately skip two letters in the Greek alphabet to name the Omicron variant? This is what many messages on social networks claim. The last variant was called Mu, and logically, the next one should have been named Nu then Xi. Except that the WHO chose to go directly to Omicron. The fault, according to many Internet users, is too close to the name of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
There was #Xi before #Omicron
They were afraid, they did not dare pic.twitter.com/OxUZFpbDCj– Scarla Oh’Arrête (@AbFabienn) November 27, 2021
It is true, the WHO has decided to skip two letters but this is not quite for the reasons put forward by Internet users. The World Health Organization explained in a statement over the weekend why it decided to avoid two letters of the Greek alphabet.
For the first, Nu is pronounced “new” in English and this name could have created confusion in English-speaking countries. Regarding Xi, if the WHO chose to avoid him, it is not directly for the Chinese president but it is because it is a common surname. Scientists did not want to stigmatize a widely used surname by giving it a variant name.
Remember in early 2021, we were talking about the English variant or the Indian variant. And so it was to avoid discriminating against a country, region or family name that the WHO decided last May to use the Greek alphabet. Another advantage: it made it possible to standardize the names internationally: for example in France last January we were talking about the British variant, while on the other side of the sleeve, the English had named it the Kent variant. from the name of the region where it was discovered. By calling it alpha variant, WHO has made it easy to simplify, not to mention that the letters of the Greek alphabet are easy to remember and pronounce.