Coronavirus and COVID-19: Do you know the difference between the two?

With over 1,00,000 confirmed cases in India and more than 4.81 million cases recorded globally, the coronavirus pandemic isn't phasing out anytime soon.

Considering it is such a mysterious disease and newer symptoms are being discovered every passing day, there is a slurry of questions looming in everybody's mind.

A big question is- is there any difference between COVID-19 and coronavirus?

Both these terms are used interchangeably and hence, it's very common to get confused between the two terms. What you need to know is that even though both of these are related to each other, they are not exactly the same.

Different viruses, and the resulting diseases they cause are given specific names.

Coronavirus refers to a family of viruses which are responsible for the spread of illness-causing viruses (some of which can even be deadly) such as MERSA, SARS, common cold.

The word coronavirus is originated from the Latin word "corona", which means "crown". The name has been given to the virus because it appear crown-shaped when looked at under an electron microscope.

The viruses are zoonotic, which means they are transmitted between animals and people. SARS-CoV was transferred from civet cats to humans and MERS-CoV from dromedary camels.

In comparison to this, COVID-19 is the name given to the type of coronavirus identified recently and was traced back to a wet market in Wuhan, China. While officially, this type of virus which is currently active was earmarked “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)”, COVID-19 is the disease responsible for the virus called SARS-CoV-2 or severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2