WHO tells countries to ‘wake up and get ready’

South Korea said it faced a “critical moment” in its effort to contain coronavirus as it reported more than 800 new cases yesterday.

Officials called on citizens to stay indoors and limit contact with other people after the country, which has the largest number of cases outside of China, recorded its biggest daily jump in numbers of infections.

In the United States, there were three new cases where the patient had not travelled overseas recently or come into contact with a known carrier.

Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organisation, said that coronavirus has the potential to become a pandemic – meaning it would be considered a truly global outbreak – but that this stage has not been reached yet.

“Our greatest enemy right now is not the virus itself, it’s fear, rumours and stigma,” he said at the weekend.

He said there was still a chance of containing the virus if its chain of transmission was broken. Dr Tedros spoke after the WHO raised the risk assessment of the virus to “very high”, with a senior official calling on global governments to answer its “wake-up” call.

“We are on the highest level of alert or highest level of risk assessment in terms of spread and in terms of impact,” said Dr Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies programme.

“This is a reality check for every government on the planet: wake up. Get ready. This virus may be on its way and you need to be ready. You have a duty to your citizens, you have a duty to the world to be ready.”

Covid-19 has spread to more than 50 countries, infected more than 85,000 people and led to close to 3,000 deaths since December.

The French government banned public gatherings of more than 5,000 people yesterday as part of efforts to curb the spread of the virus.

Three more patients tested positive for coronavirus in the UK, bringing its number of cases to 23.