The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed it will hold an emergency meeting on mpox and whether to declare the virus as “a public health emergency of international concern,” its director-general confirmed over the weekend.
The emergency meeting will be held on Wednesday, Aug. 14, to see if mpox, a virus known as monkeypox that has been spreading in about 10 African nations, should prompt the international emergency, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on social media.
“If so, it will advise me on the temporary recommendations on how to better prevent and reduce the spread of the disease and manage the global public health response,” he said.
A public health emergency of international concern is the WHO’s highest alarm and allows the U.N. agency to use emergency responses under its international health regulations. Since 2005, there have been seven such declarations, including for COVID-19 in 2020, the zika virus epidemic in 2015, and previous mpox outbreaks in 2022 and 2023.
Mpox is caused by a virus transmitted to people from infected animals but can be passed from person to person via close physical contact. Symptoms include boil-like skin lesions and rashes, a fever, and muscle aches.
Officials say that a different strain of the virus known as Clade I that is currently impacting several African countries may cause more severe illness than the variant that caused a worldwide outbreak in 2022, known as Clade II.
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