I’m confused. SARS and COVID-19 (the current coronavirus outbreak) aren’t the same, right? Which one are we talking about here?
As the name indicates, the virus is related to the SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) that caused an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002-2003, however it is not the same virus." [1]
SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the new gene.
Citation: " During the ongoing 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) originally recommended use of the temporary designation "2019-nCoV" (2019 novel coronavirus) to refer to the virus. However, this led to concerns that the absence of an official name might lead to the use of prejudicial informal names, and in common parlance the virus was often referred to as "the new coronavirus", "Wuhan coronavirus", or simply "coronavirus". Per 2015 WHO guidelines on the naming of viruses and diseases, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) announced that it would introduce a suitable official name for the virus.
On 11 February 2020, the ICTV introduced the name "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2" (SARS-CoV-2) to refer to the virus strain previously known as 2019-nCoV. Earlier the same day, the WHO officially renamed the disease caused by the virus strain from "2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease" to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). "
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...