A subcommittee of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses is in the process of finalising a proposal for new binomial names for all the poxviruses, including monkeypox.In the case of the novel coronavirus causing the current pandemic, the short name of the disease is COVID-19, while the virus is named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 .virus; it was discovered in 1958.
However, there is a problem with the names of the virus's clades. The two main clades are named after West Africa and the Congo Basin, the latter causing. This contravenes the WHO's efforts to avoid naming viral diseases after countries or continents. Unfortunately, many media outlets use photos of Africans, often children, with the tell-tale rash. This heightens perceptions that this is an"African disease" that has escaped to the Western world.
Despite the WHO naming criteria announced in 2015, the agency has been unable to change the name of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome , caused by a camel coronavirus. In fact, one of the largest outbreaks of MERS was inOne of the main reasons given for not changing the name is that it could disconnect future researchers from research papers written over more than five decades.
Another challenge is that the name would need to be changed in the International Classification of Diseases which is used around the world for medical billing and clinical epidemiology studies.Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox