As we begin the third calendar year of the coronavirus pandemic, the fast-spreading omicron variant has thrown us yet another curveball, causing staffing shortages and closures and disrupting essential services for travelers, medical patients and students alike. Over the past 24 months, terms like COVID-19, social distancing and quarantine have become part of our daily vernacular.
As the virus evolves, so does the terminology we use to tell the story, and the AP Stylebook recently updated their topical guide on the coronavirus to reflect these developments.
While the terms quarantine and isolation have been used interchangeably during the pandemic, the team at AP points out that they have distinct meanings. This guidance is especially timely with last week’s updates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cutting the recommended isolation period for people who tested positive for COVID-19 from 10 days to five. Isolation refers to preventing disease by separating sick people from healthy people. On the other hand, quarantine refers to separating and restricting the movement of those exposed to COVID-19 or another contagious disease to see if they become sick.
The updated guide includes new COVID-19 terms, including booster, breakthrough infection and hybrid immunity. Other updates to the AP guide include:
- Vaccine or vaccination? According to AP Style, a vaccination refers to the act of giving a vaccine and can be used interchangeably with the term immunization. Writers should refer to the COVID-19 vaccine (or vaccination) or coronavirus vaccine (or vaccination) rather than an anti-COVID-19 vaccine or anti-coronavirus vaccine. It is not necessary to indicate the type of vaccine unless it is relevant to the story or using the manufacturer’s name is essential to distinguish between vaccines. Finally, the team at AP advises avoiding the shorthand vax or vaxxed.
- What’s in a name? According to AP Style, virus variants, which writers can also refer to as versions, should be identified by the letter of the Greek alphabet assigned by the World Health Organization, such as omicron, and not include numbers, such as B.1.7. Avoid identifying variants with country labels like the South Africa variant.
- Mask up! The coronavirus guide defines the terms mask, respirator and ventilator and notes that it is acceptable for writers to use the word mask as a verb and combine it with the word up. For example, the CDC recommends that those with subsiding COVID-19 symptoms mask up around others after five days in isolation.
- Passports, please? Defined as documents, digital or paper, showing a person’s COVID-19 vaccination status, the term “vaccine passport” is acceptable in quotation marks, according to AP Style. Proof of vaccination, however, is better.
- Epidemic, pandemic or endemic? An epidemic, which refers to a disease spreading rapidly within a specific region or population, becomes a pandemic once it affects many people and scientists find the virus in multiple countries or continents. The editors at AP advise that endemic is an adjective that describes a disease’s constant presence, such as malaria in some tropical areas.
While still considered a pandemic, medical experts expect COVID-19 will eventually become endemic. It is critical that we continually reference expert sources and the most current information available to ensure accuracy when writing about the virus; the AP Stylebook will continue to be a reliable source for writing about this fast-evolving subject.