The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Tuesday that the novel coronavirus was a "very grave threat" for the planet as it hosted the first major conference on fighting the epidemic.
About 400 scientists were taking part in the two-day international meeting in Geneva which will review how the virus is transmitted and possible vaccines against it.
The world must “wake up and consider this enemy virus as public enemy number one,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
"With 99 per cent 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," he said.
"What matters most is stopping the outbreak and saving lives. With your support, that's what we can do."
China’s foremost medical adviser on the outbreak, Zhong Nanshan, told Reuters numbers of new cases were falling in some provinces and forecast the epidemic would peak this month.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Source: Keystone
“I hope this outbreak or this event may be over in something like April,” added Dr Zhong, 83, an epidemiologist who won fame for his role in combating an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003.
The virus, first identified in the city of Wuhan in central China on 31 December, has killed more than 1,000 people, infected over 42,000 and reached some 25 countries.
WHO has declared it a global health emergency.
Deadly virus named
The UN health agency on Tuesday announced that "COVID-19" will be the official name of the deadly virus from China, saying the disease represented a "very grave threat" for the world but there was a "realistic chance" of stopping it.
"We now have a name for the disease and it's COVID-19," Dr Tedros told reporters in Geneva.
Dr Tedros said that "co" stands for "corona", "vi" for "virus" and "d" for "disease", while "19" was for the year, as the outbreak was first identified on 31 December.
WHO had earlier given the virus the temporary name of "2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease" and China's National Health Commission this week said it was temporarily calling it "novel coronavirus pneumonia" or NCP.
Under a set of guidelines issued in 2015, WHO advises against using place names such as Ebola and Zika - where those diseases were first identified and which are now inevitably linked to them in the public mind.
More general names such as "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" or "Spanish flu" are also now avoided as they can stigmatise entire regions or ethnic groups.
WHO also notes that using animal species in the name can create confusion, such as in 2009 when H1N1 was popularly referred to as "swine flu".
This had a major impact on the pork industry even though the disease was being spread by people rather than pigs.
People's names - usually the scientists who identified the disease - are also banned, as are "terms that incite undue fear" such as "unknown" or "fatal", the WHO said.
'Roadmap for research'
There is no specific treatment or vaccine against the virus and WHO has repeatedly urged countries to share data in order to further research into the disease.
"That is especially true in relation to sharing of samples and sequences. To defeat this outbreak, we need open and equitable sharing, according to the principles of fairness and equity," Dr Tedros told the scientific conference.
He said he hoped the scientists could agree a roadmap "around which researchers and donors will align".
Asked whether scientists from Taiwan would take part, 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.
Passengers wearing protective masks at Beijing railway station in Beijing, China. Source: EPA
But in recent years it has been frozen out as Beijing takes an increasingly combative stance towards Taiwan, which it considers its own territory.
Animal testing of vaccine
The WHO said it was applying a so-called R&D Blueprint, which allows the rapid rollout of research and development activities during epidemics.
Several teams of experts in Australia, Britain, China, France, Germany and the United States are racing to develop a vaccine - a process that normally takes years.
This week, a team of scientists at Imperial College London said they believed they had become the first to start animal testing of a possible vaccine in mice.
Efforts to come up with a vaccine are being led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a body established in 2017 to finance costly biotechnology research in the wake of an Ebola outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people.
Ultimately, however, scientists may end up in the same situation they were during the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) - it died out before a vaccine could be fully developed.
A close cousin of the new coronavirus, SARS spread around the world and killed nearly 800.
