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An image shared on Facebook claims COVID-19 means see a sheep surrender in an ancient language. Verdict: False COVID-19 stands for coronavirus disease 2019. Fact Check: Social media has become replete with misinformation about the novel coronavirus that has sickened some 10.3 million people around the world to date. An image on Facebook claims the nomenclature for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, translates to see a sheep surrender. ‘Ovid’ is Latin for a sheep, read’s the image’s text. COVID starts with a C, which also means ‘see’ in ancient language. 19 was known as the ‘number of surrender’ in ancient times. C-OVID 19 = ‘See A Sheep Surrender.' But the post’s claim doesn’t hold up. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Feb. 11 that COVID-19 stands for coronavirus disease 2019, with the number 19 referring to the year the virus was first detected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website provides the same expansion for the acronym. We now have a name for the disease and it is COVID-19. And I will spell it: C-O-V-I-D hyphen one nine, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , WHO director-general, at a Feb. 11 press conference . ‘CO,’ C-O, stands for ‘corona,’ V-I stands for ‘virus,’ ‘D’ for ‘disease,’ so ‘COVID.' Ovid is not the latin word for sheep, further adding to the post’s dubiousness. The English-to-Latin dictionary on the University of Notre Dame website lists the Latin word ovis as one of the words for sheep. The letter C is an abbreviation for the number 100 in Roman numerals, not see in Latin. Ovis means sheep. C is an abbreviation for 100 (centum), Dr Paul Roche , an Associate Professor in Latin at the University of Sydney, told AFP Fact Check . I’ve never heard the number 19 as having any significance in this respect.
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