The coronavirus outbreak has been labelled a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the number of cases outside China had increased 13-fold in two weeks. He said he was "deeply concerned" by "alarming levels of inaction".
A pandemic is a disease that is spreading in multiple countries around the world at the same time.
Dr Tedros said that calling the outbreak a pandemic did not mean the WHO was changing its advice about what countries should do. He called on governments to change the course of the outbreak by taking "urgent and aggressive action".
"Several countries have demonstrated that this virus can be suppressed and controlled," he said.
"The challenge for many countries who are now dealing with large clusters or community transmission is not whether they can do the same - it's whether they will."
Source: BBC News, 11 March 2020
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