Covid-19

When the novel coronavirus first appeared we waited for it to be given a name.  In medical jargon novel  means ‘new in the sense of previously undescribed’, but the time would come when this virus was no longer new. We needed the equivalent of SARS as an identifier of this particular strain of coronavirus.  Time passed and it seemed that no one had yet come up with a name. Apparently the official group that provides such names, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, had struck a difficulty. The virus was already being called the Wuhan virus or the Wu Flu or the Chinese disease, and they wished to avoid this kind of naming that forever associated the disease with a particular place or region. 

They regretted the name Middle East Respiratory Syndrome because it seemed to cast the shadow of disease over the region. Ebola virus was problematic because the disease did not originate near the Ebola River but travelled there from Guinea, which escaped stygmatisation.

There are also some regrets about names like bird flu and swine flu. It is true that in broad terms they describe a flu which has adapted to a particular host. Thus avian flu or bird flu is the name for the flu virus that has adapted to birds as host, but it seems to imply that there is one virus in birds (there are many strains) and that all birds will succumb in the same way, and that all birds should be viewed with suspicion. This is not true.

 So the committee has arrived at a name — Covid-19 where Co is from the word corona, vi  is from virus, and -19 represents the year 2019 in which the disease was first identified. The virus that causes the disease is 2019-nCoV.  The year is obvious. The letter n stands for new and CoV  for corona virus.

 Not that anyone wants any more strains of coronavirus to appear, but this name will become a template for the naming of any future viruses of this kind and provide a standard set of names which do not cause offence to any nation, region, or ethnic group, and which do not have a negative impact on trade, travel and animal welfare. It seems that there is quite a lot in a name when it comes to identifying a virus.