COVID-19 is the specific illness related to the current epidemic.
A new virus is spreading.The acronym, provided by the World Health Organization, stands for “coronavirus disease 2019”, referring to the year the virus was first detected. The name of the virus is SARS-CoV-2.
The global COVID-19 outbreak is considered to be a pandemic, meaning it affects a wider scale than an epidemic.
MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) is another type of coronavirus. You may hear this viral respiratory illness mentioned along with SARS. In both instances, the acronyms themselves refer to the illnesses, while MERS-CoV or SARS-CoV refers specifically to the physical viruses.
The word “novel” means “new”. A novel coronavirusis a strain that hasn't been detected in humans before. The virus responsible for the current epidemic is often called the novel coro
