After COVID-19, WHO wants the world to call the covi variant strains in Greek

 Report by : Gan Yung Chyan, KUCINTA SETIA / Image courtesy : CGTN

The World Health Organization (WHO) wants the world including media to stop calling variants of SARS-CoV-2 after names of country, place or nationality to avoid nationality stigma and racial discrimination. It has released the alternative names in Greek. 

For example, B.1.617 is to called Kappa while B.1.617.2 is to be called Delta. B.1.1.7 is to be called Alpha.

The renaming causes confusion and further misunderstanding. People who do not know the origins of the covi variants will treat the Greek names as if the variant strains originate from Greece. There is a likelihood that people will not remember those names in Greek as the names suggest White supremacy.

StayGate has for many times addressed the variant strains simply as covi variants, and according to their official scientific names during news translations.

Covi is short for coronavirus, novel coronavirus, new coronavirus and synonym for SARS-CoV-2 while covid is short for coronavirus disease, COVID-19 and novel coronavirus pneumonia.

The hyphen and number "-19" are deleted from "covid" because it is not confirmed scientifically that the disease is first found in 2019 since the Chinese Communist Party has the habit of covering up the virus, disease outbreaks and epidemics in China including SARS-CoV, the SARS virus.

Besides, common disease names are not capitalized such as diabetes, cancer and influenza.

Between 2011 and 2016, there are epidemics in China that are identical to SARS and covid, according to Lawrence Sellin and the students of Shi Zhengli.

Ref: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-01/WHO-switches-to-Greek-alphabet-for-coronavirus-variant-names-10JoCO8DOUw/index.html?fbclid=IwAR3mwscQyOArayPJKaVmUpllxOpvMEVKYZjZtX-N-fOu9XmKC5dcFwWbCLE, https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3135548/coronavirus-who-switches-greek-alphabet-variant-names-avoid?utm_content=article&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2YFIcNlvrDxyERDBJF7tEg7WdaeIH5vFjA2SXmsZ3fYqV2JDXJh_cvh-o#Echobox=1622505118