What does the Greek Letter Omicron mean?

Omicron can trace its roots as a word back to Ancient Greece.

Specifically, the word is the 15th letter in the Greek alphabet, which transliterated into English would be the vowel ‘o’.

The word omicron itself translates from Greek as ‘o micron’ which means small in contrast with omega which is the last letter of the alphabet.

In the past week, Omicron has come to the notoriety of the world as the name for the latest variant of Covid.

The strain was initially called B.1.1.529 by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and was first reported by South Africa on Wednesday.