"We have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.
Leaders from the European Union are promising to do "whatever it takes" to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, which first emerged in China at the end of last year
The virus continued to spread in the United States and appeared in new countries including Bolivia, Honduras and Turkey, while Indonesia, Bulgaria and Sweden recorded their first deaths.
More than 66,000 people have recovered from the illness around the world, according to John Hopkins University.
"In the past two weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 outside China has increased 13-fold, and the number of affected countries has tripled. There are now more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people have lost their lives," said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva.