The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, with at least 118,000 cases in 114 countries and 4,291 deaths.
"We have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday (March). "We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear."
Leaders from the European Union are promising to do "whatever it takes" to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, which first emerged in China at the end of last year and Italy has further tightened the quarantine it imposed across the country earlier this week. The country's medical chief Roberto Stella, 67, was also reported to have died of the disease.
Meanwhile, the virus continued to spread in the United States and appeared in new countries including Bolivia, Honduras and Turkey, while Indonesia, Bulgaria and Sweden recorded their first deaths.
More than 66,000 people have recovered from the illness around the world, according to John Hopkins University, which is tracking the virus.