The announcement came amid figures showing Italy’s death rate for those carrying the disease has risen to more than 6 percent, higher than the global average of around 3.6 percent.
The WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the number of cases in China had increased 13-fold in the last two weeks and the number of countries affected has tripled.
There are now 118,000 cases across 114 countries.
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