WHO: Coronavirus cases stablise, but outbreak could go any way

The number of cases of infection with the new coronavirus in China has stabilised, but that apparent slowdown in the epidemic spread should be viewed with "extreme caution", the head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. "This outbreak could still go in any direction," the WHO's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told a briefing in Geneva.

At the end of a two-day meeting on research and innovation into measures to tackle the new viral outbreak, Tedros welcomed the energy and enthusiasm of scientists starting work. He added that a WHO-led advance team that travelled to China earlier this week had made "good progress" on the composition and scope of its work.