For the first time since the new coronavirus began spreading around the world more than three months ago, the United Nations Security Council met to discuss the pandemic, amid rising alarm that it could lead to social unrest and political instability.

The meeting on Thursday of the 15-member council, the most powerful body at the United Nations, was held via videoconference link and was not publicly shown on the organization’s website. But diplomats who participated said just the convening of the meeting represented progress compared with a week ago, when disputes among its five permanent members — mainly between the United States and China — prevented the Council from even discussing the pandemic.

Inaction by the Council to combat Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, has led to criticism that it has become increasingly irrelevant in dealing with threats to peace and security.

Secretary General António Guterres, who has called the pandemic the greatest threat in the 75-year history of the United Nations, warned the Council that it could lead to “an increase in social unrest and violence that would greatly undermine our ability to find the disease,” according to his office. “This is the fight of a generation,” he said.

Diplomats said the meeting, which lasted three hours, was less tense than some had feared and that the representatives from China and the United States did not confront each other with arguments over the origins of the virus, which first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December. The worst outbreaks have since shifted to Europe and the United States.

The Council issued a statement after the meeting expressing “support for all efforts of the secretary-general concerning the potential impact of the Covid-19 pandemic to conflict-affected countries and recalled the need for unity and solidarity with all those affected.” But it did not specifically call for a cease-fire in all armed conflicts, as Mr. Guterres has sought.

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