COVID-19 variants were named by the World Health Organization (WHO) after Greek letters in order to avoid confusion with the scientific names and to prevent discrimination caused by naming the variants after places.
WHO encourages countries and others to adopt these names as they will ease public discussions about global #COVID19 Variants of Concern and Interest.
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) May 31, 2021
At the end of May, the WHO announced the new naming system. Organizers said the scientific names of the coronavirus variants are complicated to say and remember, and linking the names to the places where they first appeared could be ‘stigmatizing and discriminatory’.
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Just consider the increase in attacks against people of Asian descent since the Coronavirus pandemic began: anti-Asian attacks increased by 146% from 2019 to 2020, says a study from California State University, San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. Furthermore, the WHO issued guidelines in 2015 advising against naming diseases after people or animals. Names of plants, lost religions, fruits, and made-up words were considered before Greek letters were selected.
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