Europe has become the new epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic as cases in China slow and the deadly coronavirus runs through Italy and nearby countries, World Health Organization officials said Friday.

"More cases are now being reported [in Europe] every day than were reported in China at the height of its epidemic," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference at the organization's Geneva headquarters.

WHO officials declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on Wednesday as the virus spreads rapidly across the world from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and now parts of the United States.

"When the virus is out there, the population has no immunity and no therapy exists, then 60% to 70% of the population will be infected," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference in Berlin on Wednesday, according to Reuters. The country has a population of more than 82 million.

Emerging from Wuhan, China, less than three months ago, the virus has spread to more than 132,000 people across 123 countries and territories with 5,000 people dead, WHO officials said. The number of new cases in China has slowed to a trickle, with 26 new cases reported Thursday, according to WHO data, while cases in Europe have exploded overnight.

"China has certainly peaked and there is certainly a decline but there's always a chance" that could rise again, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO's emerging diseases and zoonosis unit.