Geneva, March 17, 2020, SPA -- The World Health Organization (WHO) today called for urgent and aggressive actions to combat the new Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Southeast Asia. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director of the WHO South-East Asia Region, stressed that there is an urgent need to intensify containment efforts, where eight countries out of eleven countries in the Southeast Asia region have confirmed COVID-19 infections. He disclosed that the confirmed cases in South-East Asia are 177 cases in Thailand, 134 in Indonesia, 125 in India, 19 in Sri Lanka, 13 in The Maldives, five in Bangladesh and one case in each of Nepal and Bhutan. He called for intensifying efforts to detect cases and those who contacted them in order to isolate them. --SPA 21:01 LOCAL TIME 18:01 GMT 0032 www.spa.gov.sa/w1290031