COVID-19 is a respiratory illness caused by coronavirus; one that is characterised by fever, cough, and shortness of breath, and may lead to pneumonia and respiratory failure. ‘COVID-19’ is an acronym formed from portions of two distinct words (COronaVIrus & Disease) and a date (‘19‘ from 2019). 

Here’s a comprehensive list of words related to the global pandemic caused by COVID-19 👇🏾

Anosmia	a symptom of COVID-19; refers to losing your sense of smell as a result of infection of respiratory system.
Asymptomatic	not showing any symptoms of illness or disease. Asymptomatic people can still have and spread coronavirus.
Carrier	a person or animal that transmits the disease to others, whether suffering from it themselves or not.
Community spread	the spread of a contagious disease in a geographic area in which there is no knowledge of how someone contracted the disease.
Comorbidity	when a person has more than one health condition at the same time. Comorbid conditions can make a person more vulnerable to illness from other causes, like COVID-19.
Epidemic	occurs when a disease rapidly spreads to a large number of people within a community, population, or region.
Herd immunity	also known as community immunity, this is the reduction in risk of infection within a population, often because of previous exposure or vaccination.
Isolation	separation of infected people from healthy people for serious contagious diseases like COVID-19.
Lockdown	an emergency measure in which individuals are restricted from certain areas in an attempt to control exposure or transmission of disease.
Myalgia	a symptom of COVID-19, refers to muscle pain.
Pandemic	a worldwide outbreak of a disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) is responsible for declaring pandemics because it has access to global public health data.
PPE	stands for Personal Protective Equipment. It is a set of special clothing, headgear, goggles, masks and other garments that shield people from injury or infection.
Proning	the practice of repositioning a patient in their hospital bed so they’re lying on their stomach or on their side rather than on their back. Doctors have discovered that for patients with COVID-19, redistributing body weight this way can improve oxygen saturation levels, in many cases reducing the need for a ventilator.
SARS	stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. It is the official name (SARS-CoV-2) of the coronavirus that causes COVID.
Social distancing	also called physical distancing, it means putting space between yourself and other people at all times. The goal is to slow down how fast an infection spreads.
Vaccine	medicines that help prepare our immune systems to defend against infection from certain diseases. Usually vaccines are given before the person is exposed to the disease. Some vaccines provide lifelong immunity but others may require ‘booster shots’ to maintain immunity.
Ventilator	a machine that takes over the breathing process when patients can’t breathe well enough on their own (respiratory failure), causing a buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood that can lead to organ damage.
Zoonosis	an infectious disease caused by a pathogen (bacteria, virus, or parasite) that has jumped from an animal to a human.

Check out this video for more information on COVID-19 related words 👇🏾

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