UN chief says new virus poses 'enormous' risks

The UN secretary general said Tuesday that the virus outbreak that began in China poses a very dangerous situation for the world, but is not out of control.

Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press, Antonio Guterres said that the risks are enormous and we need to be prepared worldwide for that. Guterres said his greatest worry was a spread of the virus to areas with less capacity in their health service, particularly some African countries. The World Health Organization is looking into how to help handle such a development, he added.

Egypt recently reported its first case of the virus, raising fears of its spread to the African continent.

The outbreak has infected more than 73,000 people globally. The World Health Organization has named the illness COVID-19, referring to its origin late last year and the coronavirus that causes it.

China on Tuesday reported 1,886 new cases and 98 more deaths. That raised the number of deaths in mainland China to 1,868 and the total number of confirmed cases to 72,436.

Travel to and from the worst-hit central China region was associated with the initial cases of COVID-19 confirmed abroad. But Japan, Singapore and South Korea have identified new cases without clear ties to China or previously known patients, raising concern of the virus spreading locally.

A report saying the disease outbreak has caused a mild illness in most people raised optimism among global health authorities.

The UN chief was in Pakistan for a conference on 40 years of refugees fleeing neighboring war-torn Afghanistan.

In his interview with the AP, Guterres said that today's world is a chaotic one beset by multiple crises.

He decried the horrors of Syria's nine-year-old civil war. The UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock has warned that the most recent exodus of refugees there nearing 900,000 people fleeing fighting in the northwest Idlib region risks being the biggest humanitarian disaster of the 21st century.