Some get their name from the symptoms they cause, others from their geographic area of occurrence. How are the viruses that cause global epidemics baptized? Back on the origins, sometimes forgotten of these infections.
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A German research laboratory during the Sras epidemic in 2013. | WOLFGANG RATTAY / REUTERS ARCHIVES
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While the new virus from China has not yet been officially baptized, let’s go back to the origin of the names of viruses like Zika, Ebola, SARS …, all of which are serious global epidemics.
Chinese Coronavirus
Cases have been confirmed in France, Germany and the United States. Everyone calls it the Chinese coronavirus right now. Its name is, in reality, “2019-nCoV”. A provisional designation formed by: the year of its appearance (end of December 2019), n for novel (new because the virus was previously unknown), and CoV for the type of virus to which it belongs, ie coronaviruses.
This category of infectious agent is so called because of the crown (corona in Latin) of protuberances that can be observed under the microscope around the envelope of the virus.
It is not yet known how this newcomer will be baptized, but some media such as the American channel CNN have already renamed it “Wuhan virus” (pronounced Wou-ranne) after the Chinese megalopolis where the epidemic first appeared.
A fifth case of Wuhan coronavirus has been confirmed in the US, this one in Arizona. The others are in Washington state, Illinois and two in California. https://t.co/G910A7tCND
– CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) January 26, 2020
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Sras
SARS stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (in English Sars, severe acute respiratory syndrome). This infectious disease is caused by a virus which, like the “Wuhan virus”, belongs to the coronavirus family. Their DNA is 80% similar. Its full name is Sars-CoV.
It is therefore the disease it causes (an atypical pneumonia which seriously affects respiratory capacity), which was favored to baptize this virus which also appeared in China at the end of 2002.
The global epidemic it caused in 2003 has resulted in more than 8,000 cases and nearly 800 deaths. Scientists have now established that it was a bat that first transmitted this virus to another animal, the civet, which itself transmitted it to humans.
The seas
Discovered in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, the Mers is also a coronavirus that causes acute respiratory syndrome. It takes its name from the region of the world where it first appeared, that is to say the Middle East (Middle east in English).
Its full name is thus MERS-CoV for Middle East respiratory coronavirus syndrome. It was the dromedary that, this time, would have transmitted the virus to humans. But this animal could have contracted it himself from bats, said the Pasteur Institute, which recalls that during this epidemic, 1,219 cases were detected, causing 449 deaths.
Ebola
Ebola is the name of a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In 1976, it gave its name to the Ebola virus which was identified during an epidemic in the town of Yambuku near which this river passes.
Originally, the virus was even called “Ebola Zaire” (former name of the DRC). Of the 318 cases of hemorrhagic fever recorded at the time, 280 died.
Again, it is a bat that may be causing the contamination. The epidemic, which raged in West Africa in 2014 and 2015, caused 11,323 deaths out of 28,646 reported cases. Cases are still listed currently in the DRC.
Zika
The Zika virus takes its name from a tropical forest located in Uganda (East Africa) and populated by at least 40 varieties of mosquitoes. In 1947, scientists isolated the first infection of a monkey with this virus transmitted by mosquitoes.
Many countries in the world have since experienced epidemics due to Zika, including French Polynesia in 2013. Appeared the following year in Brazil, the virus has shown that it can cause serious neurological symptoms, such as congenital microcephaly (babies born with atrophied brains) and Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Chikungunya
Chikungunya is a viral disease transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes. It causes fever and severe joint pain. This is where it got its name: chikungunya means “to become crooked” in a language of southern Tanzania where the virus had an outbreak in 1952.
The dengue
Two hypotheses are put forward for the name of dengue, this other virus also transmitted by a mosquito and which also causes joint pain.
The term could come from Spanish dengoso, which means “mannered, stilted, minaudier” and which would refer to the stiff approach which the patients infected with this virus have. The other possible origin would be an African expression in Swahili language: “ki denga pepo” which means “sudden cramp caused by a demon”.
Smallpox
Eradicated since 1976, smallpox (or small pox) is caused by the variola virus. This highly contagious and potentially fatal infection covers patients with pustules. Its name comes from Latin varus (which means “pustule”) and varius (which means “speckled”).
–Zika, Ebola, chikungunya, Sras … But where do the names of the viruses come from?Ouest-France.fr—
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