COVID-19 naming rules

Pangu nomenclature can show the geographical evolution position of mutants and their genetic relationship with other mutants. Capitalized English letters indicate that they belong to a branch, and the dots and numbers behind them represent the offspring branches from the previous branch.

To avoid confusion with the numbers 1 and 0, the letters I and O are not used as prefixes, while X stands for recombination pedigree, and any other letters can be used as prefixes of standard branches alone or in combination; There are at most three numerical suffixes, and descendants with three suffixes will be assigned to the next available letter prefix in alphabetical order.

GISAID and Nextstrain named COVID-19 mutants according to the evolutionary distance of virus genome and the rule of "year+letter" respectively.

In order to avoid branding the country that first discovered the mutated virus, the World Health Organization issued the Greek alphabet nomenclature.

The earliest discovered B. 1. 1.7 in Britain is named Alpha, the earliest discovered B. 1.35 1 in South Africa is Beta, the earliest discovered P. 1 in Brazil is Gamma, and the earliest discovered B./kloc-0 in India.

At present, the nomenclature of Pangu is gradually accepted by most researchers, while the nomenclature of Greek letters frequently appears in daily reports.