Coronaviruses (CoV) are a family of enveloped viruses that were first discovered in the 1960s. Six strains of coronavirus were previously known to be capable of transmission from animals to humans. COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus, which was initially named 2019-novel Coronavirus, or 2019-nCoV. On February 12, 2020, International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses named the virus SARS-CoV-2, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2. The Committee determined that this coronavirus was the same species as SARS-CoV, the virus that caused a global outbreak of a respiratory illness in 2003, but a different strain, hence the designation “2”.