SNA (Tokyo) — You cannot fight an enemy that cannot identify. This is a truism that unfortunately the World Health Organization is taking too lightly. We need a viable nomenclature, even if an imperfect one, to track and understand the Covid variants that are circulating around the world, and especially around Japan.

In May 2015, the World Health Organization Best Practices for the Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases was published, including much sage advice. It counseled that new disease names should “aim to minimize unnecessary negative impact of disease names on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, and avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”

This was the reason why what was initially called the “Wuhan Coronavirus” was later designated by WHO as “Covid-19.”

As if to underline the significance of the point that WHO had made five years earlier, former US President Donald Trump’s insistence on calling it the “Chinese Virus,” etc., clearly demonstrated how nomenclature could be weaponized for political purposes, and to encourage racial discrimination.

On the other hand, it is clear at this point, when Covid variants are driving the pandemic around the world, that the WHO has dropped the ball by not providing viable nomenclature for popular use in a timely fashion. For whatever reason, they have not yet responded to the urgency of giving the global media names that they can use, although they have indicated that they working on the issue.

We do not find the Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global Outbreak (Pango) lineages nomenclature system, developed in April 2020 by the Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance in South Cambridgeshire, England, to be well adapted for popular use, whatever its scientific merits may be.

The Shingetsu News Agency expects that at some point the WHO or another organization will get its act together and provide the world with viable names for the major Covid variants, but in the meantime we are presenting our own provisional handbook. Unfortunately, we do not believe that we can avoid place names at this juncture. At any rate, with Covid having gone global and important variants emerging in many regions, it seems less of an immediate concern.

The order presented is chronological in terms of when they were first identified as having first arrived in Japan.

Covid-19: The first cases of what became the global pandemic emerged in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The first cases in Japan were reported the following month, January 2020. There is no reason not to continue to use the WHO’s designation “Covid-19.” The alternatives such as “Wuhan Coronavirus” or the unwieldy SARS-CoV-2 seem to be inferior for media purposes.

Covid (UK Variant A): Known under the Pango nomenclature system as B.1.1.7, it was first identified in Kent county, England, in October 2020. The first Japan case was identified in December 2020. It contains the N501Y mutation. Some strains, though not others, contain the E484K mutation. It is known to be considerably more transmissible than Covid-19 and possibly more lethal. In the United Kingdom, it is often called the Kent Variant.

Covid (South Africa Variant A):  Known under the Pango nomenclature system as B.1.351, it was first identified in Nelson Mandela Bay in October 2020. The first Japan case was identified in December 2020. It contains both the N501Y and E484K mutations. It is believed to be transmissible than Covid-19.

Covid (Brazil Variant A): Known under the Pango nomenclature system as P.1 or B.1.1.28.1, this variant was first identified in Japan in January 2021, carried by travelers from the Brazilian state of Amazonas. It contains both the N501Y and E484K mutations. It may be both more transmissible and more lethal than Covid-19, according to initial research.

Covid (Philippines Variant A): Known under the Pango nomenclature system as P.3, it was first detected in the Central Visayas region of the Philippines. The first Japan case was identified in March 2021. It contains both the N501Y and E484K mutations. It may be both more transmissible and more lethal than Covid-19.

Covid (California Variant A): Known under the Pango nomenclature system as B.1.429 or sometimes as CAL.20C, it was first identified in July 2020 in Los Angeles, California. It contains the L452R mutation. The first Japan case was identified in Okinawa in April 2021. It may be more transmissible than Covid-19.

Covid (Indian Variant A): Known under the Pango nomenclature system as B.1.617, it was first identified in Maharashtra, India, in October 2020. The first Japan cases were identified in April 2021. It contains both the L452R and E484Q mutations. It is known to be considerably more transmissible than Covid-19, perhaps more than any other variant to date.

Please Note that this version of the SNA Covid Variant Handbook was superseded two weeks later in a revised version.

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