Pirola

It has been some time since we named our last COVID variant and now we have a new one, nicknamed Pirola.  Its official name from the World Health Organisation is BA.2.86.  It is classified as a variant under monitoring which means that it hasn’t yet made it to being a variant of interest, let alone a variant of concern.  It has been identified in Denmark, Israel, the United Kingdom and the USA and has caught the attention of the WHO because it has such a large number of mutations, making it significantly different from the Omicron strains.  It is not known yet how it responds to the vaccines we have at the moment.

So far the WHO has not given common names to variants under monitoring or of interest, but some scientists believe that the general population needs these names (I think they are right) and so have come up with a solution.  The idea is to differentiate the names for this group from the other naming stream based on the Greek alphabet.  For this group we should draw on names from astronomy.  One person suggested Pirola, an asteroid near Jupiter, on the basis that it is close to Pi and Rho, either of which would be likely to be the WHO designation in the event that they decided it was sufficiently different to warrant having its own name in the COVID set.  The asteroid is, in turn, named after the wintergreen, which is in the genus Pyrola.

Eris is the name given to the strain EG.5, a descendant of Omicron which preceded Pirola.  Eris is highly contagious and has a greater ability to evade the immune system but in all other respects is the same as Omicron. Eris i named after the Greek goddess of strife or discord. There are too many names now to keep track of them all.

The latest Covid strain has been officially named JN.1. It is yet another Omicron descendent but even more contagious.