The World Health Organization said it was pleased by the “commitment to establishing temporary isolation units in Pakistan” during a press conference on Wednesday.

Given the development, however, the WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that he is asking all countries in the EMRO region to do more.

So far, nearly 140,000 cases and more than 6,000 deaths have been recorded in the east Mediterranean region.

“The Eastern Mediterranean still has an opportunity to slow the transmission of COVID19 – but the window is rapidly closing,” said Dr Ghebreyesus. “Early isolation of ALL cases is perhaps the most important public health measure in controlling the spread of COVID19″.

He thanked other countries in the region for their responses. It praised the outreach to 70 million people across Iran’s national campaign. COVID-19 cases were on the decline in Iran, the Director-General said, but were increasing in other countries.

He stressed the rapid increase in testing in Oman and the use of polio properties in Afghanistan and Somalia.

The WHO also most likely claims the novel coronavirus originated in animals and is not a genetically modified virus.

“All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not a manipulated or constructed virus in a lab or somewhere else,” WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib told a news briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.

In late 2019 the novel coronavirus emerged in bats in China, the organization said.