Talk:SARS-CoV-2

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The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. This article relates to COVID-19.

There have been attempts to recruit editors of specific viewpoints to this article. If you've come here in response to such recruitment, please review Wikipedia's policies on canvassing and neutral point of view. Disputes on Wikipedia are resolved by consensus, not by majority vote.

This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review prior discussions if you are considering renomination.

Discussions

29 April 2020, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 → COVID-19 virus, Speedy close, consensus to not move (permalink)
12 March 2021, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 → SARS-CoV-2, Consensus to not move (permalink)
21 June 2022, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 → SARS-CoV-2, Moved (#Requested move 21 June 2022)
17 August 2022, SARS-CoV-2 → SARS coronavirus 2, Withdrawn (#Requested move 17 August 2022)

Older discussions

22 January 2020, Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) → Wuhan coronavirus, Consensus against moving (permalink)
31 January 2020, Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) → 2019-nCoV, Consensus to move to "2019 novel coronavirus" (permalink)
9 February 2020, 2019 novel coronavirus → 2019 Novel coronavirus, Speedy close, not moved (permalink)
11 February 2020, 2019 novel coronavirus → SARS-CoV-2, Speedy close, no consensus (permalink)
18 February 2020, 2019 novel coronavirus → Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, Moved (permalink)
16 March 2020, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 → COVID-19 virus, WP:SNOW closed, not moved (permalink)
24 April 2020, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 → SARS coronavirus 2, Withdrawn by nominator, not moved (permalink)

Text has been copied to or from this article; see the list below. The source pages now serve to provide attribution for the content in the destination pages and must not be deleted as long as the copies exist. For attribution and to access older versions of the copied text, please see the history links below.

Copied pages:

Copied Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) (oldid, history) → 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease (diff) on 5 February 2020
Copied Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) (oldid, history) → 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease (diff) on 5 February 2020
Copied Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2#Strains and variants (oldid, history) → Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 variants (diff) on 23 December 2020

Molecular Biology: Genetics Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Molecular Biology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of molecular biology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Molecular BiologyWikipedia:WikiProject Molecular BiologyTemplate:WikiProject Molecular BiologyMolecular Biology
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by the Genetics task force (assessed as Top-importance).

COVID-19 Top‑importance

	COVID-19 portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject COVID-19, a project to coordinate efforts to improve all COVID-19-related articles. If you would like to help, you are invited to join and to participate in project discussions.COVID-19Wikipedia:WikiProject COVID-19Template:WikiProject COVID-19COVID-19
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Disaster management Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Disaster management, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Disaster management on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Disaster managementWikipedia:WikiProject Disaster managementTemplate:WikiProject Disaster managementDisaster management
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Medicine: Emergency / Pulmonology High‑importance

	Medicine portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine, which recommends that medicine-related articles follow the Manual of Style for medicine-related articles and that biomedical information in any article use high-quality medical sources. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.MedicineWikipedia:WikiProject MedicineTemplate:WikiProject Medicinemedicine
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by the Emergency medicine and EMS task force (assessed as Top-importance).
	This article is supported by the Pulmonology task force (assessed as High-importance).

Viruses Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Viruses, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of viruses on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.VirusesWikipedia:WikiProject VirusesTemplate:WikiProject Virusesvirus
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the Top 25 Report 2 times. The weeks in which this happened:

January 26 to February 1, 2020 (10th)
March 8 to 14, 2020 (20th)

This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Omer Benjakob (9 February 2020). "On Wikipedia, a fight is raging over coronavirus disinformation". Wired (magazine). Retrieved 9 February 2020. ... the article about the '2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak' was created on January 5, 2020. Four days later, a new article was spun off from it, dedicated solely to the 'Novel coronavirus' – officially known as 2019-nCoV. Yet another was created in February to detail the symptoms of the respiratory disease caused by the virus.
Mikael Thalen (24 March 2020). "Meet the Wikipedia editors fighting to keep coronavirus pages accurate". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 31 March 2020. Those pages include the Wikipedia article for the virus itself, known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, the disease it causes, COVID-19, and the ongoing global pandemic the coronavirus has caused.
Omer Benjakob (8 April 2020). "Why Wikipedia Is Immune to Coronavirus". Haaretz. Retrieved 10 April 2020. Asked by Haaretz to gauge the merits of the English-language article on the virus, Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, who heads the department of public health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, said he was 'pleasantly surprised by its quality.'

WikiProject COVID-19 consensus

WikiProject COVID-19 aims to add to and build consensus for pages relating to COVID-19. They have so far discussed items listed below. Please discuss proposed improvements to them at the project talk page.

General

Superseded by TfD October 2020 and later practice - consult regular {{Current}} guidance.

Refrain from using Worldometer (worldometers.info) as a source due to common errors being observed as noted on the Case Count Task Force common errors page. (April 2020, April 2020)

For infoboxes on the main articles of countries, use Wuhan, Hubei, China for the origin parameter. (March 2020)

"Social distancing" is generally preferred over "physical distancing". (April 2020, May 2020)

Page title

COVID-19 (full caps) is preferable in the body of all articles, and in the title of all articles/category pages/etc.(RM April 2020, including the main article itself, RM March 2021).

SARS-CoV-2 (exact capitalisation and punctuation) is the common name of the virus and should be used for the main article's title, as well as in the body of all articles, and in the title of all other articles/category pages/etc. (June 2022, overturning April 2020)

Map

There is no consensus about which color schemes to use, but they should be consistent within articles as much as possible. There is agreement that there should be six levels of shading, plus gray for areas with no instances or no data. (May 2020)

There is no consensus about whether the legend, the date, and other elements should appear in the map image itself. (May 2020)

For map legends, ranges should use fixed round numbers (as opposed to updating dynamically). There is no consensus on what base population to use for per capita maps. (May 2020)

Medical Cases charts

All the templates of medical cases charts of countries/territories were deleted and userfied per consensus reached on TfD. See, October 2024, December 2025, January 2026 (1), January 2026 (2), January 2026 (3), January 2026 (4), January 2026 (5) and August 2026.

To ensure you are viewing the current list, you may wish to purge this page.

Current consensus

NOTE: It is recommended to link to this list in your edit summary when reverting, as:
[[Talk:SARS-CoV-2#Current consensus|current consensus]] item [n]
To ensure you are viewing the current list, you may wish to purge this page.

1. There is consensus that the terms "Wuhan virus" or "China virus" should not be used in the Lead of the article. The terms and their history can be discussed in the body of the article. (April 2020)

Multiple issues box

Latest comment: 2 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

The multiple issues box at the beginning of “Infection and Transmitting” goes through the Infobox and series box

Does someone know how to fix this? Okso1 (talk, contribs) 17:00, 9 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Doesn't happen here (checked Firefox, Chrome, Edge). Vgbypw (talk) 07:37, 10 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Im on safari Okso1 (talk, contribs) 02:07, 12 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Recent additions

Latest comment: 23 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Note that although the recent addition is free of potential COI citations, the added claim now stays uncited. Please check WP:TOOSOON and WP:MEDRS for when it becomes appropriate for Wikipedia to include new claims - and it is often after some discovery / research has received reasonable amount of recognition, such as being supported by a review article. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk / Uploads} 20:21, 13 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

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Talk:SARS-CoV-2

Current consensus

Multiple issues box

Recent additions