The World Health Organization(WHO) will hold an emergency meeting on Thursday to decide whether to declare a global health emergency on the new coronavirus that is rapidly spreading around the world. 

The UN agency said in a news conference in Geneva on Wednesday that it will reconvene a meeting of its International Health Regulations Emergency Committee at 1:30 p.m. Thursday.

Announcing the decision, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that patients from Germany, Japan and Vietnam have been diagnosed with the virus without having been in China and expressed concern over human-to-human transmission outside of the country. 

The WHO committee will re-evaluate its previous decision not to declare the outbreak a global public health emergency.

Last week it stopped short of naming the outbreak a global incident, saying it remained a local crisis for the time being.