Hvorfor Hedder Det Coronavirus?

Why is it called Coronavirus, and what is the difference between COVID-19 and SARS-CoV2? Let’s find out! “Let’s see how coronavirus actually spreads” “Welcome to a news-coverage with focus on coronavirus” “Coronavirus is a disease that…” Hello my name is Martin and welcome to “Insanely Exciting” (Sindssygt spændende). We hear the word Coronavirus 100 times a day, but where does it come from…? Why is it called Coronavirus? When a new virus is discovered a name has to be given as fast as possible. This is to make it easier to inform the public on how it spreads, what you can do to avoid it, how dangerous it is and how to easiest get through it. It’s always WHO (Worlds Health Organisation) that names new diseases. But it’s not always easy to name new diseases.

00:46 - It’s often not known which type of disease it is and it can therefore be hard to give it a proper scientific name. For example: The disease Ebola is named after a river in the northern Congo, even though the main spread of the disease was in western Africa. So even though Ebola started in the northern Congo, the name ended up being irrelevant. The same happened with Zika-virus, which had a big spread in South America in 2015 and 2016. So is Zika at least a place in South America?…. Nope.

It’s actually the name of a forest in Uganda, where the virus was first discovered back in 1947. Another example is the outbreak of Swine influenza back in 2009. The name Swine influenza comes from the fact that the virus initially jumped from a pig to a human. Swine influenza spread from human to human like we see it with the Coronavirus. The problem with the name Swine Influenza is that many people thought you could only get infected if you came in contact with a pig, which is dangerous to believe.

01:47 - On top of that, people started killing a lot of pigs around the world in the belief that they might get the Swine influenza from pigs. And that was even though there was no evidence indicating that their pigs had the Swine influenza. Okay. So it’s very important to give a proper name to a disease to properly describe it. So is Coronavirus a better name? Well first of all, we need to understand the name of the virus really is… Is it called Corona? COVID-19? Or SARS-CoV2? To understand that we need to look at the difference between a virus and a disease. A virus is a small particle that can infect your body. The disease is the sickness that the virus gives. An example is HIV & AIDS.

HIV is the name of the virus that causes the disease AIDS. A treatment for HIV is available that keeps the HIV virus in cheque so you don’t develop the AIDS disease. Okay. So what is the name of the virus in relation to the Coronavirus? The virus that over the last couple of months has spread to the whole world is now officially called “SARS-CoV2” and is a part of the Coronavirus family. We know of more than 20 different coronaviruses that all give different degrees of flu-like symptoms. But why is it called Coronavirus? “Corona” comes from Latin and means “Crown”.

If you zoom all the way in on a coronavirus you can see some spikes with what looks like crowns on top. SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) is an example of such a coronavirus. The virus we see spreading these days has so many similarities to SARS that it is named SARS-CoV2. This stands for SARS-Coronavirus 2. Okay, so the virus by the name of SARS-CoV2 is a virus in the coronavirus family… but what is COVID-19 then? Earlier we were talking about the virus HIV could lead to the disease AIDS. And in similar fashion, the virus SARS-CoV2 can lead to the disease COVID-19.

03:37 - COVID-19 stands for Coronavirus Disease 19, since the disease was discovered in 2019. Okay. So the virus is called SARS-CoV2, the disease is called COVID-19 and the virus is a part of the coronavirus family But wait a minute. If the name of the virus is SARS-CoV2, how can it be that the media still says: “…Coronavirus is…” “…how Coronavirus actually…” “…heavily influenced by the situation with Coronavirus…” It IS actually a slight problem that the media keeps using imprecise terms. This adds to the confusion of names. But now YOU know what the difference is.

If you know someone who should also know or who might be curious, send this video to them! 04:22 - If you like what you see, then subscribe to my channel. Otherwise I just want to say, it has been… Insanely Exciting (Sindssygt Spændende!) .