The World Health Organization has declared that the new coronavirus outbreak has now taken the form of a global pandemic.

Announcing this at a press conference, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus said the organisation had been monitoring the spread of the virus around the clock and was deeply concerned by the "alarming levels of inaction".

According to media reports, the new coronavirus, or Covid-19, which began in China, has so far infected more than one lakh people worldwide and killed more than 4,300.

After avoiding the word for several weeks, Mr Ghebreyesus finally confirmed on Wednesday that the spread of the coronavirus had become a pandemic.

He said, however, that several countries had shown the spread of the new coronavirus can be suppressed and controlled.

Mr Ghebreyesus called on governments to change the course of the outbreak by taking urgent and aggressive action.

A contagious disease that spreads from person to person across many parts of the world is called a pandemic, or "global epidemic".

Mr Ghebreyesus said the number of cases outside China had risen 13-fold in the past two weeks.

He said his declaration would not change the WHO's advice to countries on what they should do about the coronavirus.

Source: BBC Bangla. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.