During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disease and virus were sometimes called "coronavirus", "Wuhan coronavirus", or "Wuhan pneumonia". In January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) tentatively named it "2019-nCoV", short for "2019 Novel Coronavirus", or "2019 Novel Coronavirus Acute Respiratory Disease". This naming was based on the organization's 2015 guidelines for naming novel viruses and diseases, avoiding the use of geographic locations (such as Wuhan), in part to prevent social stigma. A similar structure has also been used by the AP when referring to virus variants, for example, referring to it as the "Delta variant" rather than the "South African variant".