The WHO Will Stop Naming COVID-19 Variants After Countries to Avoid Stigma

The World Health Organization announced Monday that it had created a new naming system for COVID-19 variants to avoid “stigmatising labels.” 

Previously during the pandemic, COVID-19 variants have often been named after the countries in which they were first discovered. Under the new WHO naming system, the four so-called “variants of concern” will be named using letters from the Greek alphabet, alongside their scientific names. 

The B.1.1.7 variant (first found in the United Kingdom) will be named Alpha, for example, and the P.1 variant (first found in Brazil) will now be known as Gamma. 

“Today WHO has announced a new naming system for key #COVID19 variants. The labels are based on the Greek alphabet (i.e. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc), making them simple, easy to say and remember,” the WHO wrote from its official twitter account. “The labels do not replace existing scientific names, which convey important scientific information & will continue to be used in research.”  

“The naming system aims to prevent calling #COVID19 variants by the places where they are detected, which is stigmatizing & discriminatory,” they added. 

The move comes after researchers in countries like South Africa pleaded with the international community to avoid naming variants after the places in which they were initially discovered. In May, the Indian Government ordered social media platforms to take down any content that referred to the B.1.617.1 variant as the “Indian variant.” 

Epidemiologists have pointed out that variants may not have actually originated in the countries in which they were first sequenced. At the same time, the official scientific names (a string of characters and numbers) can be difficult to remember—something that the WHO’s new naming system looks to address. 

This is important given the surge of anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States and Europe, with the pejorative “China virus” popularized by far-right groups. 

The World Health Organization did not immediately respond to Motherboard’s request for comment.