SOME OTHER NAMING CONVENTIONS

COVID 19, Healthcare

    As I explained in yesterday’s essay, the COVID-19 variants can be named by where the mutations occur.

    You may have seen other naming systems used.  As of now there is no international consensus on how to name the variants. For example, the UK variant has the following names:

    The term used to describe COVID-19:  SARS-CoV-2
    The “translation”

    • SARS = “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome”
    • CoV= “Coronavirus”
    • -2 = Second identified strain, the strain of the current pandemic.

    Names for the UK Variant

    • 20I/501.Y.V1
      • 20 = Isolated in 2020
      • I = A particular subgroup listed alphabetically in order of the date of isolation and whose members all have a similar group of mutations.
      • 501Y = There is a mutation at location 501 in which Tryosine (“Y”) has been added (it replaced “N”, asparagine)
    • VOC 202012/01
      • VOC =             “Virus of Concern”  (some variants are listed as “VUI”, “Virus Under Investigation”)
      • 202012 = First found in 2020 in the 12th month, December
      • /01= First isolated strain of this variant
    • 1.1.7
      • B = A group of variants isolated with a similar group of mutations
      • .1 = The first identified group of these variants
      • .1 = The first subgroup isolated
      • .7 = The seventh identified variant in these groups and subgroups.  There are many mutations identified, but because only a small number of these variants actually spread in the community, there are a lot of “missing” numbers.  In this case virus variants .1-.6 never spread in the community.  Only .7 did.  That is the original UK variant.

    Now it is a little easier to understand the other variants.  For example:

    The South African Variant

    • 1.351
      • This variant is in the same family as the UK variant, and in the same subgroup, “B.1”. It is the 351st isolate and the one that has spread into the population.
    • 20H/501Y.V2
      • This naming system of the same virus means that the virus was identified in 2020, at a time just before the “I” group of the UK variant; it has a substitution at position 501 where tyrosine has replaced the existing amino acid; it is the second isolate.

    And in Brazil the virus isolated is given the name:

    • 1 = A new group of mutations (17 mutations), representing significant enough changes to allow it to be grouped separately from the UK of SA variants