Germany's foreign minister calls on people not to use term 'English variant'

Germany
# 18 January 2021 19:58 (UTC +04:00)

Germany’s foreign minister has called on people not to refer to the Covid mutation first detected in the UK as “the English variant”, APA reports citing BBC.

“Just as we didn’t talk about the ‘Chinese virus’ last year, now we shouldn’t talk about the ‘English variant,’” he said on Monday.

Last month, officials said the new strain of the virus has been in Germany since November. It was found in an elderly man who later died. His wife also caught the virus but later recovered.

His daughter had flown to Frankfurt from London and tested positive for the virus.

After the virus was discovered in China, it was given the official name Covid-19. Researchers had called for an official name to avoid confusion and stigmatisation of any group or country.

At the time, the World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “We had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease.”

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