Covid-19: the “sarcastic” origins of the mysterious “Centaur”, nickname of the new BA.2.75 variant

The name “slaps”, intrigues, frightens… but there is nothing serious about it and even less official. “Centaure” – or its English version “Centaurus” – would be a new variant “which already announces a new epidemic wave” of Covid-19, according to several articles published by French media in recent days. It is actually the BA.2.75 sub-lineage within the large family of the Omicron variant. As for the name, which refers to a distant constellation and a half-man, half-horse creature in Greek mythology, it comes from a simple “joke” by an Internet user, himself surprised to see it taken up so much .