World is in a race with a coronavirus trying to mutate, WHO says

FILE PHOTO: Didier Houssin, Chair of the Emergency Committee, looks on during a news conference after a meeting of the Emergency Committee on the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Geneva, Switzerland January 30, 2020. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

The world is in a race with a coronavirus trying to mutate and new variants need quick and intense research, the head of the World Health Organization's Emergency Committee of independent experts on COVID-19, Didier Houssin, said on Friday.

"The situation is presently... we are a little bit paralysed, a little bit confused," he told a virtual briefing in Geneva. "Clearly the question of travel, by air, by road and sea, needs to be perhaps better organised."

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Emma Farge in Geneva and Michael Shields in Zurich; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Toby Chopra)