The World Health Organization, on Tuesday proposed an official name for the illness caused by the new coronavirus: COVID-19. The acronym stands for Coronavirus Disease 2019, as the illness was first detected toward the end of last year.
The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that Under international guidelines, the W.H.O. “had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease,” on Twitter. The goal was to avoid stigma. The virus itself is called 2019-nCoV, although it is often referred to as the novel coronavirus by the WHO. It has also been called the new coronavirus or 2019 coronavirus, and in the media it is increasingly just called the coronavirus.
Thus now, we have an official name for the disease caused by the new coronavirus, which has killed more than 1000 people so far: Covid-19. The World Health Organization (WHO) made the announcement in a tweet on 11 February.
