OREANDA-NEWS. The World Health Organization (WHO) is convening a meeting of the Emergency Committee on January 22, 2020, due to the outbreak of a new coronavirus in China. This is reported in the organization’s statement published on Twitter.

The Committee will determine whether an outbreak of coronavirus is a threat to international security and will develop recommendations to combat it.

The outbreak began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, but infections have also been registered in South Korea, Japan and Thailand. Officially, three people died from the new disease in China. According to the WHO, Chinese authorities believe that the cause of the spread of pneumonia in Wuhan can be the same kind of coronavirus as the viruses that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS, camel flu).