Novel coronavirus is officially named as Covid-19 by WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) proposed the official name for the disease caused by the new coronavirus is Covid-19. In choosing the name, WHO advisers focused simply on the type of virus that causes the disease. Co and Vi come from coronavirus and D meaning disease and 19 standing for 2019, the year the first cases were seen.

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The virus that causes the disease has been known provisionally as 2019-nCoV. A coronavirus group from the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, which is responsible for naming new viruses, proposed designating the novel coronavirus as SARS-CoV-2. The name reflects the genetic similarities between the new coronavirus and the coronavirus that caused the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003.