NEW NAMES FOR COVID-19 VARIANTS IT’S ALL GREEK... Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Kappa & Delta

The current pandemic raging in the world has been called COVID-19 (CO-Corona, VI Virus, D- Disease)- a name assigned by WHO. The virus causing it is described as ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2’ (SARSCoV-2). Coronaviruses are RNA viruses primarily found in birds and mammals— horseshoe bats are considered the ‘natural reservoir’ of coronaviruses. The infections caused by these viruses affect the respiratory system. Covid-19 is not the first epidemic of its kind that the world has seen. Before this, two such epidemics had taken place - severe acute respiratory syndrome(SARS) in China in November 2002 and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV) in Saudi Arabia in 2013. These epidemics also caused a considerable loss of life, but they could be contained.

SARS of 2002 came from bats and jumped to humans through civets; it was again bats and camels in the case of MERS-CoV. However, in the case of COVID-19, it is still not confirmed whether the virus came from animals or was lab-made which leaked out from the Wuhan Institute of Virology(WIV). Scientists are divided on this issue leading to much debate and controversy in the matter. Afterthe outbreak, WIV, instead of sharing information with other experts, made all attempts to conceal its working. More studies have appeared now, which cast doubts on the natural occurrence of the virus. As per the latest news, the POTUS (Mr Joe Biden) has ordered an inquiry into this issue to be completed in 90 days. The differentiating feature of the present coronavirus is that it was a single strain outbreak in the beginning. However, as it infected more and more people and moved across countries, it started mutating and created several new variants. Some of the variants are more infectious, or they are immune to the vaccines-these are termed as variants of concern (VOC). Till now, at least four or five variants of concern have been detected. These have been described by scientific alpha-numeric names as given by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), comprising a group of virologists and phylogeny researchers. British variant is B.1.1.7, South African variant is B.1.351, the Brazilian variant is B.1.1.28, and two Indian variants - double mutants- B.1.617.1 and B.1.617.2. While the ICTV is responsible for naming the
viruses, it does not name subspecies of viruses. This job was therefore left to WHO. The earlier practice has been to associate the name of the virus with the place or city where it originated., e.g. Ebola was named after the river in Congo where it was detected first.