Corona viruses was first identified by a group of virologists (J D Almeida, D M Berry, C H Cunningham, D Hamre, M S Hofstad, L
Mallucci, K Mcintosh and D A J Tyrrell), who relayed their findings in 1968 to the journal Nature, which published a brief
annotation. As the journal Nature reported in 1968,”these viruses are members of a previously unrecognized group which suggest
should be called the coronaviruses, by recalling the characteristic of virus by seeing it under electron microscope.”
The word corona has different meanings. But it was the sun that the virologists had in mind when they choose the name
coronaviruses. As they wrote, they compared “the characteristic ‘fringe’ of projections” on the outside of the virus with the solar
corona.
