World Health Organization has said it will reconvene its expert monkeypox committee on 21st of this month to decide whether the outbreak constitutes a global health emergency. A second meeting of the WHO’s emergency committee on monkeypox will be held, with the UN health agency now aware of 9,200 cases in 63 countries at the last update issued Tuesday. A surge in monkeypox infections has been reported since early May outside the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic.
On 23rd of last month, the WHO convened an emergency committee of experts to decide if monkeypox constitutes a so-called Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), the highest alarm that the WHO can sound. But a majority advised the WHO’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the situation, at that point, had not met that threshold.
Now a second meeting will be held, with case numbers rising.
In a statement, the UN health agency said, the emergency committee will provide its views to the WHO director-general on whether the event constitutes a PHEIC.
