COVID variants should adopt a semantic versioning, rather than using greek alphabetics.
COVID v.19.2.34
COVID V.22.1 Beta (testing in US)
COVID v.22 release 1 (being tested somewhere in London)
COVID v.22 nightly builds (still brewing in China)

Its not that simple.
alpha, beta, gamma are just names to group variants,
Each variant has its own code:
Alpha B.1.1.7
Beta B.1.351
Gamma P.1 or B.1.1.28.1
Delta AY or B.1.617.2
Omicron  B.1.1.529

It's called "pangolin" or "pango nomenclature system"

It represents the entire tree of "releases"

If you think of covid as an Open source GitHub repo and mutations as Forks, the pangolin system is capable of versioning Not only major and minor releases but also individual forks.

I prefer the Greek letters, because at some point we'll have a sigma variant and boy will that have meme potential

Strictly speaking it is a religion of the Branch Covidians. So the numbering system is a bit strange.

👌

@LotsOfCaffeine with semver, we can get 420 or 69 though which arguably has higher meme potential ?