A real image of COVID-19

No.

The “CO” stands for the family of viruses called the coronavirus or coronaviridae. They are positive sense, single stranded, RNA viruses. COVID-19 is the name they chose to give this specific strain of the virus that is causing the current pandemic of “2019”

SARS stands for “severe acute respiratory syndrome” this is the actual clinical syndrome that can happen is some people who get the virus (and sometimes a super-imposes pneumonia). The virus can also cause a more defined clinical syndrome called ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome).

SARS-CoV was the catchy name they gave the virus that caused the previous pandemic, which came out of China back in 2002-2003.

Some people referred to the current coronavirus stain as SARS-CoV 2 initially, because it is so similar to the previous one. But I guess WHO decided to go with naming after the year it was first detected rather than its sequence. Either way, it’s the name of the virus.

There is also MERS (Middle eastern respiratory virus) or MERS-CoV which was another coronavirus that causes a few cases of similar symptoms in 2015.

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