The use of Greek alphabet in naming Covid-19 variants

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the fore many novelties along with death and distress. The main lesson that we learned is that when health is at risk, everything is at risk. The pandemic enriched vocabularies in virology such as strain, mutations, and variant. Viruses with mutations become variants; when the variant displays different physical properties to the original virus, we get a new strain. Essentially, all strains are variants, but not all variants are strains. Interestingly, with the various variants and strains, the onslaught is on the Greek alphabet for finding nomenclature and distinction; and after Delta, it is now Omicron. As we experience more quizzical mutation, the practice may be haranguing more letters from the innocent Greek alphabet domain. Greek alphabets are fascinating and interesting to students at secondary level when they read trigonometry. That is perhaps their initial experience with the Greek alphabet. The first Greek letter, any student is first to is theta, which looks as if an elongated emaciated English alphabet O. Indeed, the inclination indicates the weakness of theta. There are many letters such as phi, tau, and psi that represent trigonometric angles with different values. Students need to memorise certain critical links to get the correct answer; such as tan 45° is equal to 1 from the ratio of sin 45° and cos 45° both with a value of . The use of the Greek alphabet was, however, limited to a few letters in secondary and higher secondary levels.

At the undergraduate students are more exposed to different Greek letters such as alpha, beta, gamma, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, eta, zeta, pi, rho, sigma, tau, delta, and omicron. R.G.D Allen, the British economist in his books emphasized the use of the Greek alphabet in mathematical analysis. The justification for using the Greek alphabet was the inadequacy of the English alphabet. According to him “The English alphabet provides insufficient material for the notation of mathematical analysis and greater range and flexibility are acquired by using the letters from the Greek alphabet.” The use of Greek letters was not limited to only textbooks in physics, chemistry, and engineering but also in economics, statistics, and other social sciences. Students reading microeconomics always enjoy the delicacy in dubbing economic concepts such as elasticity, income elasticity, and cross-price elasticity through various Greek letters. The Greek alphabet complements scientific analysis in a benign way and was never used in designating phenomena frightening to human existence.

Omicron is the 15th Greek letter that designates the nascent Covid-19 strain discovered in South Africa. Other Greek letters in use in naming the various strains are alpha, beta, delta, gamma, and lambda. This nomenclature demeans the Greek alphabet from its sacred use. There are different ways to designate entities in science. The biological way of naming plants is different from the rule in chemistry in designating compounds. However, there is no specific nomenclature for gene and protein names, which has led to a number of possible writing variants and synonyms being associated with the proteins that make detection and classification difficult but naming a variant just by a Greek letter and popularising it obscures many important structural features. Thus B.1.1.7, B 1.351, P.1 or B.1.1.28.1, B.1.617.2, and C.37 represent alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and lambda respectively. It is very difficult to rationalize the use of the Greek letter for all these numerical nomenclatures. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] has designed a robust method in the study of SARS-COV-2 variant classification and definition such as how variants are classified, variants being monitored [VBM], variants of interest [VOI] ], variants of concern [ VOC] and variants of high consequences [ VOHC]. An illustration may be useful in this context, “In early December 2020, concern was raised among scientists and public health officials about a surge of cases in southeastern England caused by a specific variant of SARS-CoV-2. Routinely, approximately 5-10 per cent of all Covid-19 cases in the United Kingdom are sequenced for epidemiological surveillance, and although only 4 per cent of cases in Kent, England had sequencing data, 117 out of 255 sequenced cases, or almost half, were found to form a distinct phylogenetic cluster. This means that this group of viruses are genetically very similar, and therefore more related to each other than other strains of the virus. This variant was initially designated as Variant Under Investigation (VUI) – 202012/01 upon detection, but, on further review given its rapid spread, has been re-designated as Variant of Concern (VOC-202012/01) or B.1.1.7 (a name derived from its phylogenetic heritage).”

One way to designate the variant may be through the location, the point of origin. The alpha variant was from the UK, beta from South Africa, gamma from Brazil, delta from India, and lambda from Peru. There are other variants identified in many parts of the world but not as virulent as the previous five. Other variants such as eta ( B.1.521) were first identified in Nigeria, the epsilon and iota variant in the USA, the theta variant in the Philippines, the kappa variant from India, and the zeta variant from Brazil. Twelve Greek letters [with Omicron] are already in use out of twenty-four letters in the Greek alphabet. The inclusion of xi may not be a decent option for the WHO as more strains invade the Covid-19 spectrum because the Chinese President already uses the letter in his first name. We all know the consequences of the news anchor when she uttered “Eleven” Jinping instead of xi in Doordarshan news broadcast in India.

The naming system for SARS-CoV-2 variants through the Greek alphabet is the brainchild of WHO. The purpose is to avoid tagging the country from the curse of origin yet the tendency of the common mass is to label the country with the variant. People prefer to name South Africa instead of omicron. Many countries have imposed restrictions on flights from South Africa and its neighbouring countries. The country cannot avoid responsibility as we observed in the case of Wuhan in China. Donald Trump was more comfortable to say China Variant or the Wuhan variant, but this is inaccurate and xenophobic.

It is more appropriate in naming an entity through its structure and keeping the domain confined within the academics than the narrow confinement of Greek letters that does not endorse any refined connotation.

The writer is the Treasurer and a Professor at the School of Business and Economics, United International University. He may be contacted at [email protected]