BQ.1, BQ.1.1, BF.7, and XBB: Why New COVID-19 Variants Have Such Confusing Names

If you can name the currently circulating coronavirus variants without looking them up, your memory is better than most people’s—even those who are still paying attention to COVID-19. At the moment, the top five variants in the U.S. are called BA.5 (making up about 39% of new cases, per the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), BQ.1.1 (almost 19%), BQ.1 (16.5%), BA.4.6 (9.5%), and BF.7 (9%). Meanwhile, the XBB variant has been detected in at least 35 countries, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is monitoring a variant called B.1.1.529. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] This alphabet-soup nomenclature feels like a marked departure from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Greek letter system, which was instituted in May 2021 to give people an easy and location-neutral way to refer to new variants. While the Greek lettering system, which yielded names like Alpha, Beta, and Delta, did not replace existing scientific naming systems—such as those responsible for labels like BA.5 and XBB—it was meant to simplify public communication about important viral strains. The WHO only assigns a new Greek letter to a variant if it’s significantly different from previous versions. And for the last year, we’ve seen flavor after flavor of Omicron, rather than totally new iterations of the virus, explains Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19. That’s why...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news