COVID19 Full Form
What is the full form of COVID-19?
The
full form of COVID-19 is Coronavirus Disease of 2019.
This
name was first given by the World Health Organization (WHO) in a press release
on 11th February, 2020.
Coronaviruses (CoV) and the origin of the name.
Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause numerous types of illness which includes,
Common cold, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV), Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV).
In
late 2019, a new type of coronavirus which was never observed earlier to infect
humans, was identified as the source of human illness (common symptoms included
fever, body aches, tiredness, and difficulty in breathing caused by pneumonia) in
China and given the name 2019-nCoV (2019-Novel Coronavirus).
By
late January 2020, WHO and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
declared the outbreak of the virus to be a public health emergency of
international concern.
On
11th February 2020, WHO renamed 2019-nCoV as Coronavirus Disease of 2019 and
its abbreviated form COVID-19 in a press release.
It
was Categorized as a global pandemic by WHO in March 2020.
Why was the coronavirus renamed to COVID-19?
According
to the press release of WHO, the new nomenclature was given “to enable
discussion on disease prevention, spread, transmissibility, severity, and
treatment.”
In
other words, the name, and its abbreviation, was chosen because it didn’t refer
to a specific geographic location, a specific animal, or a specific group of
people. It is easy to pronounce throughout the world and very much related to
the disease.
What is a coronavirus?
Coronaviruses
are common human and animal viruses belonging to the family Coronaviridae in
the order Nidovirales.
The
coronavirus is surrounded by crown-like spikes made up of proteins (the
coronavirus spike protein is a multifunctional molecular machine that mediates
coronavirus entry into host cells). Due to the presence of crown-like spikes on the external surface of the virus, the name
“corona” was originated (In Latin “corona” stands for “crown”).
They
were first discovered in domestic poultry in the 1930s. In animals,
coronaviruses cause a range of diseases affecting respiratory,
gastrointestinal, liver, and neurologic systems of the human body.
Till
date the number of coronaviruses which are known to cause disease in humans are
limited to seven.
Among
them, four human coronaviruses (namely, 229E, OC43, NL63, and HUK1) cause
symptoms of the “common cold.”
The
other three human coronaviruses cause severe lung infections, which is also termed
as pneumonia: SARS-CoV in 2002 (severe acute respiratory syndrome or “SARS”),
MERS-CoV in 2012 (Middle East respiratory syndrome or “MERS”), and SARS-CoV2
(the current pandemic known as COVID-19).
What is a novel coronavirus?
A
“novel” coronavirus stands for a newly discovered coronavirus that has not been
earlier identified in humans. In other words, it is different from the coronaviruses
that cause the common cold, and those that caused SARS in 2002 and MERS in
2012.
Similar
to, SARS and MERS, the novel coronavirus is a zoonotic disease (i.e., one
special kind of disease that initiates in animals and is transmitted from
animals to humans).
Epidemiology of COVID-19
It
is usually transmitted from human-to-human via respiratory droplets or fomites.
The
median incubation period of the virus inside the host (i.e., human body) from
exposure to symptoms onset is 4–5 days.
According
to a recent study, 97.5% of persons with COVID-19 who develop symptoms (there
are asymptomatic carriers too) will do so within 11.5 days of SARS-CoV-2
infection.
Symptoms of COVID-19
Common Symptoms
- Fever (83–98%)
- Non-productive cough (59–82%)
- Fatigue (44–70%)
- Anorexia (40–84%)
- Shortness of breath (31–41%)
- Sputum production (28–33%)
- Myalgia (11–35%)
Less common symptoms (< 10%)
- Sore throat
- Diarrhea
- Dizziness
- Headache
- Other GI symptoms
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