The official naming of COVID-19 has the tone of a committee decision. Historically, names for diseases have not been quite so well thought out and were more likely to offend.
Researchers around the world are working together to control the coronavirus outbreak, now known as COVID-19. This is what’s behind the global effort to develop a vaccine.
Frontier research initiatives to tackle the 2019 coronavirus seem to be dominated by institutions in China, the US, Japan and labs across Europe. Very little seem to be coming form Indonesia.
While US residents may feel safe from the effects of the coronavirus, the aftershocks could be damaging in unexpected ways. The disruption to China’s supply chain could cause drug shortages.
As cities have shut down and residential compounds have issued curfews, social media in China have become more important than ever. But it is a place of rumours and mistruths.
Misinformation spreads fast when people are afraid and a contagious and potentially fatal disease is frightening. This provides the ideal emotionally charged context for rumours to thrive.
The coronavirus is still spreading in China, and the doctor who warned Chinese officials early on about a possible outbreak is now dead. But in the US, some think the outbreak is exaggerated. Is it?
Immigrants experienced stigma and blame during the Ebola crisis when in fact many were instrumental in stopping the spread of the disease. A scholar who studied that response offers insights.
In the real world, new diseases emerge from complex environments. To learn more about how, scientists set up whole artificial ecosystems in the lab, instead of focusing on just one factor at a time.
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand