The term “CORONA” comes from the Latin “CORONAM”, which means crown. The coronavirus name comes from the aspect these viruses have. When we observe them under electron microscopy they look like they have a crown around them.
These Coronaviruses have an envelope made of a membrane. This membrane has many spikes attached to it (these spikes are structural proteins).
Those structural proteins around the virus, make it look like a crown. Hence the coronavirus name.
THE DIFFERENT CORONAVIRUSES
As we said before, COVID-19 is not the first one. There are many coronaviruses, and they are classified into 4 families:
- alphacoronavirus
- betacoronavirus
- gammacoronavirus
- deltacoronavirus.
The current COVID-19 belongs to the betacoronavirus family.
OTHER “FAMOUS” CORONAVIRUSES
In fact, there are many other coronaviruses we’ve heard of, even if we don’t remember.
The common cold is sometimes caused by some of them (HCoV-OC43 and others).
Also, some other infectious outbreaks of this century were because of Coronavirus. For example the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 or the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012.
These kinds of viruses have a tendency to infect animals. That’s why COVID-19’s origin is presumably in bats. Scientists think it probably traveled through the pangolin to the humans.
When they jump to other species like humans, they usually cause severe diseases. That’s because not being used to them (as they usually affect animals) we are defenseless against them.
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