The Los Angeles Post

WHO to decide if monkeypox is a health emergency

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The World Health Organization is set to meet to decide if monkeypox is a global health emergency.

 

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) emergency committee will meet next week to determine whether monkeypox is a “public health emergency of international concern,” it announced Tuesday, signaling an increasing level of concern about the outbreak.

 

“I think it’s now clear that there is an unusual situation, meaning even the virus is behaving unusually from how it used to behave,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “It’s also affecting more and more countries and we believe it needs also some coordinated response because of the geographic spread.”

 

Elevating monkeypox to a public health emergency of international concern would give it the designation that COVID-19 received in early 2020.

 

Important differences with COVID-19: 

  • Monkeypox does not spread as easily as COVID-19. Monkeypox primarily spreads through direct contact with infectious sores, or through clothing or bedsheets. It can also spread through prolonged face-to-face contact.
  • There have also been no deaths reported among the newly-affected countries in the latest outbreak, though Tedros said the WHO is seeking to verify reports from Brazil of a potential death there.