in february 2020, the who announced a name for the disease caused by sars-cov-2: covid-19. it replaced the name "2019-ncov." "covi" is for "coronavirus," "d" for "disease," and "19" for the year 2019 – the year it was first detected. they said they did not want the name to have any person, place, or animal in it because people might blame the disease on that place, person, or animal. for example, it did not use the word "wuhan." they also wanted the name to be easy to say out loud.