{"id":2173,"date":"2023-01-10T20:08:54","date_gmt":"2023-01-11T02:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=2173"},"modified":"2023-01-10T20:08:55","modified_gmt":"2023-01-11T02:08:55","slug":"who-named-the-new-covid-variant-the-kraken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/01\/10\/who-named-the-new-covid-variant-the-kraken\/","title":{"rendered":"Who named the new COVID variant “The Kraken?”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Source article in Fortune<\/a>. Everyone knows the names of the major COVID variants like Alpha, Delta, and Omicron. But last year, viral evolution shifted, muddying the waters, as well as the names of the major variants. Instead of spawning entirely new variants, COVID began evolving within Omicron itself\u2014at a breakneck pace, no less.\u00a0The organization responsible for figuring out what to call the latest variants of concern\u2014the World Health Organization\u2014stopped using Greek letters after Omicron, arguing that new variants weren\u2019t different enough to warrant nicknames. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you remember the previously ubiquitous COVID strains BA.4, BA.5, or BQ.1.1? Have you heard of the currently surging XBB.1.5, and do you understand what the tangle of letters and numbers mean? You probably don\u2019t\u2014and some experts say it\u2019s because of the convoluted names. You could be forgiven for thinking another strain of Omicron poses no new threat\u2014especially if you\u2019ve already had Omicron or received the new Omicron booster. New strains of Omicron are becoming increasingly more transmissible and evasive, with the ability to dodge immunity from prior vaccination and infection. And using the term \u201cOmicron\u201d or something like XBB.1.5 to describe them just isn\u2019t cutting it anymore,\u00a0Dr. Ryan Gregory<\/a>, a biology professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you don’t already follow Dr Gregory on Twitter, I highly recommend! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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lZ CmTfYGwpis<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source article in Fortune. Everyone knows the names of the major COVID variants like Alpha, Delta, and Omicron. But last year, viral evolution shifted, muddying the waters, as well as the names of the major variants. Instead of spawning entirely new variants, COVID began evolving within Omicron itself\u2014at a breakneck pace, no less.\u00a0The organization responsible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coping-with-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Asset-2@2x.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2179,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173\/revisions\/2179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}