Thoughts on the naming of “COVID-19”

Abstract

Based on the naming of diseases in the history and the nomenclature of diseases, especially that of novel human infectious diseases, in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and modern medicine, we put forward the following suggestions for the naming and severity classification of “coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)”: (1) Patients with only nucleic acids positive or nucleic acid positive as well as some of the symptoms but without any evidence of pneumonia should be diagnosed more generally such as “Novel coronavirus respiratory infection (NCRI)” or “Novel coronavirus infection (NCI)”. (2) The manifestations concerning pneumonia can be used as the main basis for the classification of the severity of the disease. For instance, those with only nucleic acids positive or nucleic acid positive as well as mild symptoms are mild, those with nucleic acid positive as well as symptoms like fever and cough are moderate, those with nucleic acid positive as well as pneumonia are severe, those with severe symptoms as well as respiratory failure and multiple organ damage are critical. (3) Also, those with infections and clinical manifestations but no pneumonia can be called simple type, and those with pneumonia can be called pneumonia type. (4) Under the current background of integrative medicine, the naming of newly emerging infectious diseases by TCM should be changed from an ambiguous concept to a clearly defined one. It may define the disease according to the etiology, pathogenesis, clinical manifestation or prognosis of the disease, redefine the original concept in TCM and discard the excessively broad part, or carry out the common naming between TCM and modern medicine based on the specific pathogen. (5) According to the nomenclature of diseases in TCM plus that in modern medicine, the NCI may be named “Jihai (2019) — Pestilence” (Ji Hài (2019) — Yì Lì) in TCM.