UPDATE 1-WHO says no time for complacency as China coronavirus cases fall

A continued decline in the number of new cases of coronavirus infections in China is encouraging, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, but it is too early to know if this trend will continue.

"We are encouraged by this trend but this is no time for complacency," the WHO's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told a briefing in Geneva. He also noted that the number of coronavirus cases in the rest of the world was very low compared inside China, but added: "That may not stay the same for very long".

The latest cases reported by South Korea are from "several distinct clusters", Oliver Morgan, the WHO's director of health emergency information and risk assessment, told the briefing. "The number seems quite high, (but they are) mostly linked to the existing outbreak," he said. "That doesn't signal a particular change in global epidemiology."