Is COVID-19 the same as the coronavirus? What is SARS-CoV-2? Pandemic terminology can be confusing. Here’s how it came about.
The history of COVID-19
In late December 2019, when the international media first started to report on an outbreak of viral pneumonia in Wuhan, China, neither the virus nor the illness had been named. There was speculation about SARS – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – a disease that broke out in China in 2002, but it quickly became clear that the virus causing people in Wuhan to get sick had not appeared in humans before.
Then, in January, news sources started to refer to the ‘novel coronavirus’ (‘novel’ means new). Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that range from mild (causing only a cold) to lethal (causing severe respiratory tract infections and serious complications). Scientists first identified them in chickens in the 1930s, and in humans in the 1960s. ‘Corona’ means ‘crown’ and refers to the crown-like structure observable on the surface of viruses in this family.
On 11 February 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the new, formal name for the novel coronavirus disease was COVID-19. ‘CO’ stands for ‘corona’; ‘VI’ stands for ‘virus’; and ‘D’ is for ‘disease’. The number 19 indicates that the disease first appeared in humans in 2019.
On the same day, scientists named the virus itself SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2). They chose this name because it’s genetically related – but not identical – to the SARS virus that caused the outbreak in the early 2000s.
Why do the virus and the disease have different names?
It is not uncommon for a virus to have a different name to the disease it causes. A familiar example is HIV/Aids – HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is the name of the virus and Aids (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) is the disease.
This is partly down to which global body is responsible for naming it. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) has the job of naming viruses. Guided by virologists (scientists who study viruses), the ICTV decides on a name based on the genetic structure of the virus. This makes sense because the genetic structure of the virus is what virologists focus on when they’re developing diagnostic tests, vaccines and medicines.
WHO prepares for, and respond to, the spread of diseases. So it falls to WHO to determine the official names of new diseases in a diagnostic manual called the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
Why is it sometimes called "the virus that causes COVID-19" or "the COVID-19 virus"?
WHO has explained that it consciously chooses not to use ‘SARS-CoV-2’ to refer to the virus in certain contexts because the name SARS could cause panic in parts of the world affected by the 2002 outbreak. The new virus also has different characteristics and effects, so it’s important that people who lived through the SARS outbreak don’t view it as the same thing.
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