关于新型冠状病毒命名的思考与建议

2019年12月,一种由新型冠状病毒(2019-nCoV)引起的病毒性肺炎开始在武汉暴发流行。2020年2月11日,世界卫生组织(WHO)将新型冠状病毒肺炎命名为COVID-19(冠状病毒病2019),国际病毒分类学委员会(ICTV)的冠状病毒研究小组(CSG)建议把新型冠状病毒命名为SARS-CoV-2(严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2),既没有与疾病名称一致,也没有完全真实地显示该病毒本身的特征,因而立即引发关注和争议。基于COVID-19的病原学、流行病学和临床特征的基本信息,建议将新型冠状病毒命名为“人类冠状病毒2019”(human coronavirus 2019,简称HCoV-19)。文章回顾并评价了CSG的命名方法,指出他们使用基于基因序列信息进行病毒命名的方法并不合适,建议采用传统的联系疾病的病毒命名方法对具有明显疾病特点的病毒如2019-nCoV进行命名。

Consideration and Suggestion for Naming the Novel Coronavirus

A new type of viral pneumonia caused by a novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China in December,2019. On February 11, 2020, WHO named the novel coronavirus disease as COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019). On the same day, the novel coronavirus was named as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by the Coronaviridae Study Group (CSG) of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. The new name of the virus is not consistent with its disease name and does not completely and truthfully reflect the features of the virus itself, which immediately caused wide concerns and confusion. Based on etiological, epidemiological and clinical data of COVID-19, we propose to name the virus as human coronavirus 2019 (HCoV-19) . The CSG adopted a genome sequence-based method to name 2019-nCoV, which we think is not appropriate for this virus that has caused a distinct disease from SARS caused by SARS-CoV. We suggest that the disease-based method should be employed to name the newly identified human virus that causes a distinct disease.