Corona Daily 164: Bee Dot One Dot Three Five One

Scientists and the World Health Organisation are genuinely worried. About the complete chaos in naming the different coronavirus variants. I wrote earlier about the 2015 WHO guidelines that prohibit places or animals when naming viruses. Nobody had imagined then that not only a virus, but its variants may have to be named.

Names should be simple, easy to pronounce, type and memorise. This is how we name our children (Elon Musk the only exception). Look at SARS-CoV-2. It looks more like a strong password. People prefer to use the imprecise Covid instead.

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It would have been all right if only the public and media were confused. But the scientists too are confused about naming the variants. One scientist said: You can’t track something you can’t name.

The dangerous variant colloquially called “the UK variant” is named VOC 202012/01 by Public Health England. VOC is Variant of Concern. A group of scientists call it B.1.1.7. Some English tabloids call it the “Kent variant”.

“20H/501Y.V2”, “VOC202012/02” and “B.1.351” (pronounced bee dot one dot three five one) are three names for the same variant popularly known as the “South African variant”. Like with a password, if you miss a single digit or dot, it may become another variant.

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It is dangerous to name the variants after nations, as is done currently. These nations have identified these variants, they didn’t necessarily start there. UK and South Africa have more advanced genome surveillance. But fearing the transmissibility of the “UK variant” some countries may be tempted to ban travel from the UK. Worse, stigmatizing places would mean their scientists would be reluctant in future to declare new variants. Expressions such as “the South African variant of the Wuhan virus” may also encourage xenophobia and racist attacks.

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When WHO didn’t exist, the world managed to come up with simple names. ‘Cancer’ is Greek for crab, because Greek physicians found some tumours similar to crabs. Asthma was the Greek word for panting. Plague was the translation of stroke or wound. Diabetes meant “to pass through”, to describe excessive discharge of urine. Influenza, an Italian word, referred to an outbreak. Its short form “flu” is a wonderful example of how easy a name can be.

Scientists the world over are trying to grapple with the naming crisis. One proposal suggests naming the variants in chronological order, V1, V2, V3 and so on. This unimaginative solution may find a few supporters. Hurricanes, Greek letters, birds, animals (though banned by WHO), local monsters are some others. Colours is another option.

One group of scientists tried to convert the scientific names into mnemonics: D614G became “Doug”, N501Y “Nelly” and E484K “Eeek”. (Eeek makes the virus less susceptible to vaccines). The last one was supposed to be called Eric, but that was the name of one scientist in the group, so they settled for Eeek.

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GSAID (Global initiative on sharing all influenza data) is a database for naming. It would have been wonderful if it was the only one. But there are two more: Pango and Nextstrain. All three competing systems follow their own methods. A mutant is a virus that has in its genetic code mutations, different from the wild genotype acquired via errors. A variant is a mutant, and a strain is a variant with a markedly different manifestation (transmissibility, lethality, effect on immunity or vaccines). Apparently, even scientists are not precise about using those terms.

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Sickened by the whole mess, on 14 January WHO held a meeting to discuss a new standardized naming system for variants. It is hoped the system will be generated before the pandemic is over.

Ravi