Novel Coronavirus

The novel coronavirus, first discovered with a viral pneumonia case in 2019, is a new strain of coronavirus that had never been found in humans before. The coronaviruses already known can cause cold or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and other diseases of varying degrees.

On February 8, 2020, China's National Health Commission temporarily named the pneumonia infected by the novel coronavirus as "novel coronavirus pneumonia" in Chinese. The commission issued the Guidelines on the Novel Coronavirus-Infected Pneumonia Diagnosis and Treatment (Provisional 6th Edition) on February 19, pointing out that respiratory droplets and close unprotected contacts are the main routes of transmission, and that transmission through aerosols is possible in the case of long-term exposure to high concentration aerosols in a relatively closed environment. The main signs and symptoms of the infected people include fever, dry cough and fatigue, and the incubation period varies from 1 to 14 days. Currently there is no vaccine available against the disease.

The WHO temporarily named the new virus as "2019-nCoV" on January 12, and officially named the pneumonia infected by the virus "COVID-19" on February 11. "CO" stands for corona, "VI" for virus, "D" for disease, and "19" for the year 2019 in which the disease was first discovered.

新型冠狀病毒

新型冠狀病毒因2019年病毒性肺炎病例而被發現，是以前從未在人類中發現的冠狀病毒新毒株。已知的冠狀病毒可引起感冒或中東呼吸綜合征（MERS）、嚴重急性呼吸綜合征（SARS）等不同程度的疾病。

2020年2月8日，國家衛生健康委將新型冠狀病毒感染的肺炎暫命名為新型冠狀病毒肺炎（簡稱新冠肺炎），并于2月19日發布《新型冠狀病毒肺炎診療方案（試行第六版）》，指出經呼吸道飛沫和密切接觸傳播是主要的傳播途徑，在相對封閉的環境中長時間暴露于高濃度氣溶膠情況下中存在經氣溶膠傳播的可能；以發熱、干咳、乏力為主要臨床表現，潛伏期為1-14天。目前，針對新冠肺炎尚無可用疫苗。

世界衛生組織1月12日將此種新病毒暫命名為“2019-nCoV”，并于2月11日將新冠肺炎正式命名為“COVID-19”，其中"CO"代表Corona（冠狀），"VI"代表Virus（病毒），"D"代表Disease（疾病），"19"代表疾病發現的年份2019年。