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Hospitals are obligated to report to the CDC once they discover pneumonia caused by an unknown virus that can transmit from human to human. SARS or COVID is just a name scientists gave to the sequenced virus.

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This is a nit, but SARS and COVID aren't the names of the respective viral agents; they're the names for the diseases that the viruses cause.

The virus that causes SARS is called SARS-CoV, and the virus that causes COVID-19 is SARS-CoV-2

If you don't know then you don't have to report. I don't think initially they knew that human to human transmission was possible.

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