delta and kappa variants

It was another outbreak in Melbourne in late May that introduced us to the new names for the COVID-19 variants of concern.  Apparently India had complained to the WHO about the way in which the world was talking about the Indian variant and so the WHO responded by renaming the lot. From now on the British variant is the alpha variant, the South African variant is the beta variant, the Brazilian variant is the gamma variant, the Indian variant is the delta variant and a second Indian variant is the kappa variant.  All these are variants of concern except the kappa variant, which is a variant of interest.

 The new names are simpler (compare them with the numeric style based on genome features) and do not stigmatise particular countries.  For a while we were not sure whether the kappa variant existed or whether it was just the delta variant, but it turns out to be a variant of the delta variant.