In doing so, the WHO decided to skip over two letters in the Greek alphabet: nu and xi. The reasons for doing this remained a bit of a mystery until the WHO itself clarified the issue on Saturday.

Since May the World Health Organization has been using letters of the Greek alphabet, in order, to name coronavirus variants. Delta was the most dominant one, followed by eight others -- including ...

The previous key variant was called mu, which is the 12th letter. The 13th letter in the Greek alphabet is nu, but officials thought it could be too easily confused with the word “new,” The ...

Why WHO skipped two letters of the Greek alphabet in naming Omicron By Faith Karimi, CNN Nov 29, 2021 Updated Nov 29, 2021 0 1 of 2 ...

With only 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, however, there is the grim possibility that the WHO may run out of names for variants. It has already used 12 letters, with Mu named in September.

Speculation has arisen over the World Health Organisation’s decision to skip two letters in the Greek alphabet when naming the new Covid variant. Yesterday the WHO announced it had named the new ...

Four of the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet don't appear in standard crosswords because they're too short (MU, NU, PI, XI), while others are too long to pop up more than occasionally (OMICRON ...

After a new variant with the unwieldy scientific name of B.1.1.529 was discovered last week in South Africa, observers might have expected WHO to name it after the next Greek letter on the list: Nu.