As new cases of the coronavirus spiked on two continents, the World Health Organization warned on Monday that the world was not ready for a major outbreak, even as it praised China’s aggressive efforts to wrest the epidemic under control, The New York Times reports.

After two weeks on the ground in China, a team sent by the W.H.O. concluded that the draconian measures China imposed a month ago may have saved hundreds of thousands of people from infection. Such measures — sealing off cities, shutting down businesses and schools, ordering people to remain indoors — have provoked anger in China and could be difficult to replicate in democratic countries with a greater emphasis on protecting civil liberties.

“There’s no question that China’s bold approach to the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of what was a rapidly escalating and continues to be a deadly epidemic,” said Bruce Aylward, a Canadian doctor and epidemiologist who has overseen international campaigns to fight Ebola and polio and who led the W.H.O. delegation.

The epidemic has already killed more than 2,600 people in China, mostly in Hubei Province, where the outbreak began in December and infected more than 77,000 people. But the number of new infections in China has been steadily dropping, giving officials in the country confidence that the extraordinary measures have been effective in blunting the virus’s spread.

There are concerns, however, that as people begin returning to work in China, the virus could flare up again. At the same time, new cases are escalating outside China. In Italy, where there has been an eruption of more than 150 cases, the authorities have locked down at least 10 towns, closed schools in major cities and cancelled sporting events — all moves that are echoes of China’s tactics, if not quite as draconian.

In Iran, the outbreak has killed at least 12 people as of Monday, the largest number of coronavirus-linked deaths outside China. South Korea on Monday reported 231 additional cases, bringing the nation’s total to 833 cases and seven deaths. By Tuesday, another 60 infections had been recorded, bringing the total to just under 900.