While the rest of the world practises achingly boring but incredibly necessary social distancing, researchers at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have been getting up close and personal with SARS-CoV-2 to bring us this image of the virus in action.

Released last week, the colour-enhanced picture was captured using an electron microscope at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

It shows a multitude of minuscule virus particles (yellow) infecting the host cell (blue), isolated from a patient sample.

Each virus particle contains a single strand of RNA enveloped in an outer lipid layer, surrounded by crown-like protein spikes — hence the name corona, Latin for ‘crown’ or ‘halo’.