One of the questions that have been talked about the most lately is who has named COVID-19 or in general, who names viruses? Next, I will try to answer this question.

Some people confuse a virus with a bacterium. In many countries, the best-known virus is the flu virus, although there are also several subtypes of this virus, and the most common are type A flu (H1N1 and H3N2), terms that surely few people know.

However, since COVID-19 has reached all societies to change our "normality", we have learned a lot about viruses, their differences, mutations, their spread and transmission, their impact on health, their lethality, the symptoms what it causes, its treatments, and vaccines, and everything that has to do with them. Therefore, would you like to know who names the new viruses? Let's talk about it.

Who Names Viruses?

First of all, with respect to COVID-19, it must be taken into account that this name is an acronym, I. e., an acronym that is pronounced as a word. This name is taken from the words "corona", "virus" and "disease". As for 19, it represents the year it emerged (the outbreak was reported to WHO on December 31, 2019). This name was announced by the World Health Organization at the beginning of February 2020, therefore, this is the institution in charge of informing about everything that has to do with diseases and viruses.

For some time this disease was known as "Wuhan pneumonia", however, this name was considered pejorative. For this reason, the name of COVID-19 was chosen to avoid any type of reference to the place of origin of the disease, the animal, or the species in which it arises.

Correctly choosing the name of a high-impact virus such as this is a great responsibility, as a bad name can generate negative consequences. For example, it happened that H1N1 for a time was called swine flu and this led to the slaughter of pigs in many corners of the world because pigs were considered to be the cause of this problem.

ICTV Names New Viruses

On the one hand, it is the World Health Organization that in any case is in charge of naming diseases. They are the ones in charge of preparing and responding to human diseases. Consequently, they are also responsible for giving the official name to diseases in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). However, on the other hand, it is the ICTV that names the viruses, I. e., the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.

The name of the virus is the responsibility of this other institution while the objective is to facilitate the development of diagnostic tests, vaccines, and drugs. In this sense, the ICTV gives this name while the virus that causes COVID-19 is called SARS-CoV-2 (type 2 coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome).

So this name was chosen because the virus is genetically related to the coronavirus responsible for the 2003 SARS outbreak, although it is true that they are two different viruses. However, this name is used to know what type of virus we are facing, I. e., the ICTV tries to achieve a universal classification in order to have a standard that regulates the formal description of new strains, as well as the ordering of their location.

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Why is COVID-19 Called Like That?

But why is Covid called Covid exactly?

This virus was included within the taxonomic category of the Coronaviridae, CoV, or Coronavirus, named for the extensions that it carries on top of its nucleus and that resemble the solar corona. Their discovery was revealed in the journal Nature in 1968.

As I mentioned earlier, the name should not refer to a geographic location, an animal, an individual, or a group of people, and at the same time, it should be easily pronounceable and should be related to the disease (always taking into account its symptoms) since the objective was that the denomination is not stigmatized. It also gives us a standard format to use in future outbreaks of other and new versions of the coronavirus.


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