The bigger picture:

A high-res close-up of a coronavirus.

illustration, created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), shows the ultrastructure morphology exhibited by coronaviruses. When viewed using an electron microscope, spikes that adorn the outer surface of the virus are visible, and these appear as corona surrounding the virion. First detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, a novel coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2 was identified as the cause of an outbreak of a respiratory illness initially called 2019-nCoV. Renamed COVID-19, this new virus spread rapidly around the world, and was declared a pandemic by the World

Health Organization (WHO).