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The naming of variants of SARS-CoV-2 has been a bit slapdash. Different databases that share the sequences of the virus have different nomenclature norms. For instance, the variant that emerged in the United Kingdom is called B.1.1.7 on the Pango platform, but is called 20I/S:501Y.V1 on Nextstrain. Yesterday (May 31), the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest (VOI) and variants of concern (VOC) will be named based on the Greek alphabet for purposes of public discourse. As B.1.1.7 was the first VOC designated by WHO, it is called Alpha under the new naming system. B.1.351, which originated in Brazil, is now called Beta. The two other VOCs are P.1, the variant first identified in Brazil and now referred to as Gamma, and B.1.617.2 that originated in India, now called Delta. The six VOIs designated by WHO take up Epsilon through Kappa in the Greek alphabet. The full list will be maintained on WHO’s website. ....
Science s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation Testing for COVID-19 at Johannesburg s airport in January. A variant of concern that arose in South Africa has spread around the world. PHOTO: GUILLEM SARTORIO/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES Last month, Gytis Dudas was tracking a concerning new coronavirus variant that had triggered an outbreak of COVID-19 in his native Lithuania and appeared sporadically elsewhere in Europe and in the United States. Exploring an international database of coronavirus genomes, Dudas found a crucial clue: One sample of the new SARS-CoV-2 variant came from a person who had recently flown to France from Cameroon. A collaborator, Guy Baele of KU Leuven, soon identified six more viral sequences from people in Europe who had traveled there from Cameroon. But then their quest to pinpoint the variant s origins hit a wall: Cameroon had only uploaded 48 viral genomes to the global sequence repository called GISAID. None included t ....
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