WHO skipped over Nu and Xi

Speculations arose when the World Health Organization (WHO) opted to skip over the expected continuation of the Greek alphabet to name the new coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa last week. Like the other variants “Beta” and “Delta”, the next names were predicted to be “Nu” and “Xi,” however the organization went with “Omicron” instead.

The WHO clarified in a statement to Associated Press on Saturday that ” ‘Nu’ is too easily confounded with ‘new,’ and ‘Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name.”

They claimed that a general rule of thumb when naming diseases is to avoid “causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”

Critics took to social media to question whether this move was an effort to avoid offending Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Former president Donald Trump previously fuelled the fires of anti-asian sentiment by referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus” or “Wuhan virus,” despite a continuous worldwide effort to reject the stigma surrounding its name.

His son, Donald Trump Junior, is still fanning the flames.

“As far as I’m concerned the original will always be the Xi variant,” he said in a tweet.

In a similar tweet, Republican Senator Ted Cruz suggested that naming the new variant Omicron showed that the WHO was “scared of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The WHO has faced considerable criticism of its handling of China throughout the pandemic and accusations that it gave into pressure from China.

In May of this year, the international health organization declared its adoption of the Greek alphabet system to name the virus’ variants, claiming this was easier to say and remember.

“Xi (is) a particularly common last name among current Chinese presidents,” tweeted political scientist Ian Bremmer in response to Associated Press’ report.

Data from the Ministry of Public Security suggests the Chinese president’s surname is the 296th most common family name in the country.

According to Forebears, a geographically indexed source for family history research, “Mu,” the last variant named after a Greek letter, is a more common family name than “Xi” is.