(noun) Disease caused by a novel coronavirus first recorded in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, which quickly spread worldwide and caused the most serious global pandemic since influenza in 1918.
The word that has defined 2020 was first spoken in public by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization. At his daily media briefing about coronavirus on February 11, he announced: “We now have a name for the disease: Covid-19. I’ll spell it: C O V I D hyphen 19.”
Covid stands for COronaVIrus Disease and 19 for the year in which it was first detected. The WHO’s disease-naming guidelines meant avoiding words that might cause offence or stigmatisation. “We had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people,” Mr Tedros said.