Cotton drags WHO for being 'more concerned' about protecting 'feelings' of Chinese gov. than public health

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WHO announces omicron strain and causes worldwide panic

Fox News correspondent Jonathan Serrie reports on ‘Special Report’ the race to contain the new COVID-19 threat, the omicron variant.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said in a Saturday tweet that the World Health Organization (WHO) is more concerned about protecting the Chinese government's "feelings" than public health.

The tweet came after WHO confirmed it skipped the Greek letters "nu" and "xi" in naming its new COVID-19 variant, which it dubbed the "omicron" variant, though it is unclear if Cotton's tweet was in reference to the organization's variant name choice.

"The WHO is a joke," Cotton said. "They're more concerned about the feelings of the Chinese Communist Party than they are about public health. President Biden should never have resumed funding to this corrupt puppet of the CCP without reform."

In another Saturday tweet, the Arkansas Republican said Chinese President Xi Jinping "is defensive about being linked to the virus that the Chinese Communist Party unleashed on the world."

WHO SKIPS OVER GREEK LETTERS ‘NU’ AND ‘XI', NAMES NEW VARIANT ‘OMICRON’

A WHO spokesperson told Fox News in a Saturday statement that it skipped the Greek letters "nu" and "xi" because "'nu' is too easily confounded with ‘new,’ and ‘xi' was not used because it is a common last name."

"WHO best practices for naming disease suggest avoiding ‘causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups,'" the spokesperson said.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), addresses a press conference about the update on COVID-19 at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)

WHO recommends using Greek letters to make the virus naming process easier, according to its website. Variants being monitored include alpha (B.1.1.7 and Q lineages), beta (B.1.351 and descendent lineages), gamma (P.1 and descendent lineages), epsilon (B.1.427 and B.1.429), eta (B.1.525), iota (B.1.526), kappa (B.1.617.1), zeta (P.2) and mu (B.1.621, B.1.621.1), which is the last letter before nu, followed by xi and omicron.

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The move did not go unnoticed by pundits and politicians on social media — some of whom criticized the decision while others praised it.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also criticized the WHO, saying the organization is "scared of the Chinese Communist Party" in a tweet.

Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., said "the new virus should be call the Xi variant, since China lied and spread COVID to begin with!" in tweet Saturday.

WHO and China have faced strong criticism from around the world over their pandemic response, as China blocked WHO investigators from entering Wuhan for months in 2020. They finally arrived in mid-January of this 2021 and released initial findings a month later.

Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus, arrive at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, in China's central Hubei province on February 3, 2021. (Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)

The first cases of coronavirus were discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December of 2019.

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A May Wall Street Journal report citing previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence documents found some of the Wuhan Institute of Virology workers who fell ill in 2019 required hospital care, lending weight to what some have dubbed the "lab-leak theory." 

The organization in February said its initial joint report with China into the origins of the pandemic found it "extremely unlikely" the virus came from a lab and advised "future studies."

The WHO issued a July statement admitting that the lab-leak was not "extremely unlikely" after all.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.