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The head of the World Health Organisation on Tuesday warned the novel coronavirus was a "very grave threat" for the world as he opened a conference to combat the epidemic.

"With 99% of cases in China, this remains very much an emergency for that country, but one that holds a very grave threat for the rest of the world," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva.

Some 400 scientists will review how the virus is transmitted and possible vaccines at the two-day forum.

"What matters most is stopping the outbreak and saving lives. With your support, that's what we can do together," Tedros said.

The virus, first identified in China on December 31, has killed more than 1,000 people, infected over 42,000 and reached some 25 countries.

Participants will also discuss the source of the virus, which is thought to have originated in bats and reached humans via another animal such as snakes or pangolins.

There is no specific treatment or vaccine against the virus, which can cause respiratory failure.

Tedros, who has repeatedly urged countries affected to share their data, called for global "solidarity".

"That is especially true in relation to the sharing of samples and sequences. To defeat this outbreak, we need open and equitable sharing, according to the principles of fairness and equity," he said.

"We hope that one of the outcomes of this meeting will be an agreed roadmap for research around which researchers and donors will align," Tedros said.

Several companies and institutes in Australia, China, France, Germany and the United States are racing to develop a vaccine -- a process that normally takes years.

Asked whether scientists from Taiwan would be allowed to take part in this week's Geneva conference, WHO officials said that they would do so but only online -- along with colleagues from other parts of China.

While the WHO does not deal with Taiwan directly and only recognises Beijing, Taiwan was often allowed to attend annual assemblies and sideline meetings as an observer.

But in recent years it has been frozen out as Beijing takes an increasingly combative stance towards democratic Taiwan, which it considers its own territory.

May 5: Global coronavirus deaths reached 250,000 on Monday after recorded infections topped 3.5 million, a news agency tally of official government data showed, although the rate of fatalities has slowed.

North America and European countries accounted for most of the new deaths and cases reported in recent days, but numbers were rising from smaller bases in Latin America, Africa and Russia.

Globally, there were 3,062 new deaths and 61,923 new cases over the past 24 hours, taking total cases to 3.58 million.

That easily exceeds the estimated 140,000 deaths worldwide in 2018 caused by measles, and compares with around 3 million to 5 million cases of severe illness caused annually by seasonal influenza, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

While the current trajectory of COVID-19 falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people, killing at least 10% of patients, experts worry the available data is underplaying the true impact of the pandemic.

The concerns come as several countries begin to ease strict lockdowns that have been credited with helping contain the spread of the virus.

"We could easily have a second or a third wave because a lot of places aren't immune," Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at Canberra Hospital, told Reuters. He noted the world was well short of herd immunity, which requires around 60% of the population to have recovered from the disease.

The first death linked to COVID-19 was reported on Jan. 10 in Wuhan, China after the coronavirus first emerged there in December. Global fatalities grew at a rate of 1-2% in recent days, down from 14% on March 21, according to the Reuters data.

DEATH RATE ANOMALIES

Mortality rates from recorded infections vary greatly from country to country.

Collignon said any country with a mortality rate of more than 2% almost certainly had underreported case numbers. Health experts fear those ratios could worsen in regions and countries less prepared to deal with the health crisis.

"If your mortality rate is higher than 2%, you've missed a lot of cases," he said, noting that countries overwhelmed by the outbreak were less likely to conduct testing in the community and record deaths outside of hospitals.

In the United States, around half the country's state governors partially reopened their economies over the weekend, while others, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, declared the move was premature.

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who battled COVID-19 last month, has said the country was over the peak but it was still too early to relax lockdown measures.

Even in countries where the suppression of the disease has been considered successful, such as Australia and New Zealand which have recorded low daily rates of new infections for weeks, officials have been cautious.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has predicated a full lifting of curbs on widespread public adoption of a mobile phone tracking app and increased testing levels.