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‘A bloody mess’: Confusion reigns over naming of new COVID variants

As more lineages emerge, researchers are struggling with a patchwork of nomenclature.
  1. Ewen Callaway
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Would a virus by any other name spread so fast? As scientists identify more and more potentially worrying variants of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, they are grappling with just what to call them. At a 12 January World Health Organization (WHO) meeting devoted to coronavirus variants, health officials and researchers started hashing out a new naming system.

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Nature 589, 339 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00097-w

References

  1. Rambaut, A. et al. Nature Microbiol. 5, 1403–1407 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Tegally, H. et al. Preprint at MedRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.21.20248640 (2020).

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