WHO raises global coronavirus alert level to very high

GENEVA (AA) - The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday said the risk of the new coronavirus COVID-19 in the world outside China had been raised to “very high.”

“We have raised the global risk to very high from high,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom at a news conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva.

He said the right measures can contain the epidemic.

The WHO head noted that China reported 329 cases over the past 24 hours -- the lowest in more than a month.

China has reported a total of 78,959 cases of COVID-19 to WHO, including 2,791 deaths.

Outside China, there are now 4,351 cases in 49 countries with 67 deaths.

Since Thursday, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Netherlands, and Nigeria had all reported their first cases. All these cases have links to Italy, according to the WHO chief.

Tedros said a total of 24 cases had been exported from Italy to 14 countries, and 97 cases had been exported from Iran to 11 countries.

“The continued increase in the number of cases, and the number of affected countries over the last few days, are clearly of concern,” he added.

Tedros said there were epidemics of COVID-19 in several countries, but most cases could be traced to known contacts or clusters of cases.

“We do not see evidence as yet that the virus is spreading freely in communities,” he added.