What are COVID-19 Variants?

Viral mutations are common and expected. Since the beginning of the pandemic in late 2019, we’ve seen a number of prominent COVID-19 variants, including Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron. Monitoring each COVID-19 variant is essential to our understanding of the behavior of the virus and our ability to predict its impact on the COVID-19 Pandemic. This is especially important if a new variant causes more severe disease, spreads more easily, and/or is showing signs of resistance to COVID-19 vaccines. Reducing spread of COVID-19 through large scale vaccination efforts and by practicing proven disease control measures is critical to lessen the development of viral mutations which lead to variants that could worsen the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic The World Health Organization (WHO) is the entity which names the new COVID-19 variants using letters of the Greek alphabet. About the Status of the Pandemic