The novel coronavirus finally has a name—two of them, actually
The novel coronavirus. (CDC/)After weeks of referring to the outbreak that emerged in China in late 2019 by the hard-to-say name 2019-nCoV or the problematic moniker “Wuhan coronavirus,” after the city where the disease emerged, the illness finally has an official name: COVID-19, pronounced phonetically. On a Wednesday press briefing, the CDC’s Nancy Messonier switched between 2019-nCoV and the new disease name, saying she was still adapting to COVID-19. The simple name (it’s short for Coronavirus Identification 2019, the year the disease emerged) was intended to meet agreed guidelines on naming a disease and also “prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatizing,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a prepared speech on Tuesday. If you’re reading about COVID-19, you’ll probably also run across another name: SARS-CoV-2. This name refers to the virus, but not the disease it causes. In other words, you...