On February 8, 2020, at the press conference of joint prevention and control of the State Council Office, the spokesman issued a notice on the spot about COVID-19's temporary name of pneumonia. Novel coronavirus's pneumonia is called "novel coronavirus" or "COVID-19" for short, and its English name is "Novel coronavirus pneumonia" for short.

At first, this virus was called coronavirus, however, this is just the general name of the virus category to which it belongs. 65438+1October 12, the world health organization has temporarily named this newly discovered coronavirus as 20 19-nCoV. Among them, 20 19 is the year when the virus was discovered, CoV is "coronavirus", and n stands for "new", which means "new".

However, this name is awkward and difficult to use. In many overseas reports, this name is not frequently used, but discriminatory names such as "Wuhan virus" often appear. In order to avoid discrimination or demonization of a country or city, experts of the International Committee on Viral Taxonomy have been discussing how to determine the most suitable name.