GENEVA, May 6 (Xinhua) -- World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said that the "while the fire is raging," he calls upon the world to now "focus on fighting the fire".

Responding to a question about examining the timeline for the declaration of the global public health emergency, the WHO chief said at a virtual press conference in Geneva that WHO "actually wants any assessment more than anyone. We will do the assessment when the time comes -- what we call the after-action review."

"On assessments, I know that WHO has a culture of assessing issues and it has a process called after-action review," Tedros said. "So we will see what happened based on the timeline, when we do the assessment."

"But now, I call upon the world to focus on fighting the fire, because while fire is raging, I think our focus should not be divided. And we should really focus on fighting the fire and saving lives," he said.