The World Health Organization has dropped two Greek letters when naming omikron

The World Health Organization will not call the new corona variant “Xi” or “Nu”. Therefore, they skipped two letters of the Greek alphabet.

In May, the World Health Organization (WHO) began using Greek letters as a naming system for various types of coronavirus. The UN says the goal was to make public communication about variables easier and less confusing The New York Times.

For example, the variant discovered in India was named ‘delta’ instead of the designation B. 1.617.2. Delta is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet.

When the new variant discovered in South Africa was to be named, they skipped “now” and “xi”, and instead moved to the fifteenth letter in the alphabet, omikron.

– It is very easy to confuse the word “now” with “new” and the word “shi” was not used because it is a common title, says WHO spokesperson, Tarik Yasarevich.

He adds that the WHO seeks to “avoid offending any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic group”.

Only the most notable variants, which the World Health Organization describe as variables of concern or variables of interest, are named within the system.