Libya's education ministry issued a decree recently, asking schools to announce a quarantine between 3 and 10 February because of a surge in COVID cases across the country.
But the ministry managed to insert a typo when referring to the name of the virus, which turned its decree - figuratively at any rate - viral: the Omicron variant - named after the 15th letter in the Greek alphabet - was misspelt "Macron", inadvertently shifting blame onto the French President.
The document with the typo has been doing the rounds on social media since then.
Libyan Education Ministry's decree on coronavirus quarantine in schools, February 2022
© Photo
France's leader isn't the first one to have found himself accidentally linked with the virus: earlier, US rapper Omarion addressed fans on TikTok, asking them not to confuse his name with that of the new coronavirus strain. And Belgian death-metal group Omicron has said that it is not going to change its name because of the coincidence.
In November 2021, the World Health Organisation designated the variant B.1.1.529 - first reported in South Africa - a variant of concern and named it Omicron, saying that the new strain would probably turn out to be more infectious but less deadly than the previous variant, Delta, which was named after the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet.