2019-nCoV officially named COVID-19

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently announced that the deadly virus outbreak from China will be officially called as “COVID-19”.

The official name was announced to avoid references of particular geographic locations, species of animals or group of people. It has earlier named the virus as “2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease”, temporarily. In the official name, ‘CO’ stands for “corona”, ‘VI’ for “virus” and ‘D’ for “disease”, while ‘19’ denotes the year.