Switzerland has postponed a high-level health summit that had been scheduled for next week due to the outbreak of the deadly new coronavirus.

The decision was made "because numerous participants must remain in their own countries to deal with the COVID-19 epidemic," Switzerland said in a statement Wednesday, without announcing new dates.

The Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety had been due to take place in Montreux in western Switzerland on February 27 and 28.

More than 2,100 people have died in the COVID-19 outbreak that began in December, with more than 74,000 people infected in China, and hundreds more in over 25 countries.

The annual summit has convened since 2016 in different countries.

At this year's event, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and health ministers and experts from around the world had been set to discuss the measures needed to improve the quality of healthcare around the world.

The Swiss government said the postponement would "allow time to learn from how the (COVID-29) epidemic is being managed and to assess the effectiveness of the measures taken in different countries."

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