Health authorities and experts on Wednesday held a meeting with the World Health Organization for research on South Korean cases of COVID-19.

On Tuesday, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the UN agency would be joining the COVID-19 cohort studies led by researchers here.

The Wednesday meeting, organized by the National Medical Center, was attended by four officials from the Korea National Institute of Health -- including its director, Kwon Jun-wook -- as well as four infectious disease specialists and two epidemiologists from five hospitals. William Fisher and Tom Fletcher of the WHO also attended.

Kwon said the WHO has requested Korea’s cooperation in providing its research data on the new disease to help establish a direction for the virus response. He added that the patient data from the participating medical institutions will be shared in the research.

Kim Sung-soon, the head of the institute’s infectious disease center, said the meeting would be an opportunity to “step up international collaboration in clinical, epidemiological and immunological studies, which will become basis for formulating disease control policies.”

According to the WHO situation report Monday, countries outside China with over 1,000 cases are Korea, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway. Community spread of the virus was reported in at least 83 countries.

By Kim Arin (arin@heraldcorp.com)