FACT CHECK

Fact check: COVID-19 is short for 'coronavirus disease 2019'

Chelsey Cox
USA TODAY

The claim: COVID-19 stands for Certificate of Vaccine ID Chip Artificial Intelligence

A breakdown of the official name for the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, reveals sinister implications, according to a Dec. 26 Instagram post.

"COVID-19: C = Certificate, O = Of, V = Vaccine, ID = the mandatory I.D. chip Which is planned to. accompany the vaccine, 1= (A is first letter), 9= I is the 9th letter 19 stands for A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)," the poster, who is unidentified, explains.

"Oh! So that’s what it stands for!" reads the caption from user, parlertakes.

Parlertakes reposted the claim to Instagram from Parler, a conservative-leaning social media platform. The account "looks at Parler so you don't have to," according to its profile page. 

The owner of the parlertakes account told USA TODAY that the post caption was meant to be sarcastic.

"The person is dissecting the name in some weird way that makes it appear like the vaccine is meant to put microchips in all of us. It’s a common conspiracy theory floating around Parler," the owner said.

More:Fact Check: Acronym 'COVID-19' has nothing to do with vaccination certificates or AI

What does COVID-19 really mean?

The World Health Organization assigned the name COVID-19 to the coronavirus on Feb. 11, according to a statement.

"We now have a name for the #2019nCoV disease: COVID-19. I’ll spell it: C-O-V-I-D hyphen one nine – COVID-19," Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said according to a Feb. 11 tweet.

The name was released months before the first vaccine against COVID-19 became available in November, according to USA TODAY.

Per the WHO's statement, "COVID-19" was designed to be straightforward and unbiased.

"Following best practices, the name of the disease was chosen to avoid inaccuracy and stigma and therefore did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people," the WHO explained.

Detailed information on how COVID-19 was chosen is also available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The new name of this disease is coronavirus disease 2019, abbreviated as COVID-19. In COVID-19, ‘CO’ stands for ‘corona,’ ‘VI’ for ‘virus,’ and ‘D’ for disease. Formerly, this disease was referred to as '2019 novel coronavirus' or '2019-nCoV,' the CDC explains in a Sept. 1 fact sheet.

More:Fact check: Bill Gates is not planning to microchip the world through a COVID-19 vaccine

There is no proof that COVID-19 was a coded acronym for microchipping or artificial intelligence. Claims of injecting microchips into vaccine recipients are false, according to USA TODAY.

Other social media posts assigning alternate meanings to COVID-19 appeared on Facebook in March and in August. Both were debunked by USA TODAY and PolitiFact.

Our ruling: False

We rate this claim FALSE, based on our research. COVID-19 stands for coronavirus disease 19, not "Certification of Vaccine ID chip." The name of the virus has nothing to do with artificial intelligence or microchipping, as the claim states. 

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