Coronavirus spreads. But don't panic! (topical thread)

[Dom]

WHO has officially dubbed the new variant 'Omicron' and placed it in the same class of 'variant of concern' as Delta.
Cases in Belgium and Israel are confirmed. The US has announced travel restrictions on flights from South Africa and
adjacent nations beginning Monday.

Why has the WHO jumped to omicron?  Why not epsilon (Ε, ε)... where's the logic?    Or is there
none?

The Greek alphabetical script derived from a Semitic alphabet by way of the Phoenicians, used
from about the 8th century BCE for the writing of Greek, and forming the basis of many other
scripts, including Latin and Cyrillic. The letters of the Greek alphabet are: alpha, beta, gamma,
delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, xi, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, tau,
upsilon, phi, chi, psi, omega.

The other variants exist but were no of special interest. Only one of every so many variants turns into a threat.

Variants of SARS-CoV-2 - Wikipedia