Days after the World Health Organisation found objections over using ‘Wuhan’ and ‘China’ for mentioning the Coronavirus which has been taking a toll at the global scenario, the organisation came up with a new name. After juggling for almost a month, the Coronavirus Study Group (CSG) of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses confirmed the name ‘COVID-19’ while ‘co’ and ‘vi’ for ‘coronavirus’ & ‘d’ stands for disease, while ’19’ indicates the year that it was first discovered. Announcing the same, Tedros Adhanom, director-general of the WHO took to the press conference to discuss the necessity of naming the virus.
It was taken care that the name was framed in accordance with the guidelines set in 2015 that ensure the name does not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, while still being pronounceable and related to the disease. However, it has been almost 6 weeks that the virus broke out and was being called by different names which created quite a confusion. Though WHO blamed the senior scientists for still learning about the new virus making it tough for them to come with one particular name, the global media have a different story.
Reportedly there had been a confusion between various global organisations that were working on the outbreak. Coronavirus Study Group (CSG) stated that they have proposed several names to meet the urgency which were rejected by the WHO quoting various reasons. Meanwhile, names attached with the city/country/animal of breakout started taking rounds on social and global media which was against the WHO regulation. However, the global organisation didn’t meet the urgency and now is facing criticism for the untimely announcement. Many of the citizens including a few of the media houses are still not accustomed to the new name while WHO stood as the culprit. “WHO is so overwhelmed with what’s going on there, they didn’t have the time,” said one of the senior scientist who is now busy in testing various vaccine combinations.
