I'm sure this has nothing to do with the name of one particularly popular person.
But Xi is a pretty common surname in China, and the virus has already caused enough hatred towards Asians in general, there's no point in fueling it even more.
Xiè is the 23rd most common name, Xià is the 65th most common one. There's plenty of others who are very similar, but the pronunciation will be much different, so I'm skipping those.
But when you just need to argue semantics to make your point, perhaps your point isn't that strong at all. And honestly, the spelling of "Xi" has indeed nothing to do with my argument, it was the deeper point that is at issue. I.e. the ongoing abuse towards Asians, naming the virus Xi simply would fuel it.
Just doing some ad-hoc lookup showed me that here are at-least over 700,000 People with "Xi" as the last name. Not including quite similar names like "Xié".
Sure that there is a certain very powerful person with that name, probably mattered in making them rethink if they should use it. Still there being over half a Million people with that name is a sound argument anyway.