The World Health Organization will convene an emergency committee on Thursday next week to assess whether the monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern.
This is the highest level of warning issued by the United Nations agency, which currently only applies to the COVID-19 pandemic and polio.
This year there have been 1,600 confirmed cases and 1,500 suspected cases of smallpox and 72 deaths, the WHO said, in 39 countries, including those where the virus is commonly spread.
Smallpox is endemic in some parts of Africa, but there have been more cases in both these countries and the rest of the world in recent months. The virus causes flu-like symptoms and skin lesions, and spreads through close contact.
According to the WHO, it is believed to be fatal in about three to six percent of cases, although no deaths have yet been reported in the outbreak outside Africa. Most of the deaths this year have occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was time to consider increasing the response because the virus is behaving unusually, there are more countries affected and there is a need for international coordination.
“We do not want to wait until the situation is out of control,” added Ibrahima Socé Fall, WHO’s director of emergency for Africa.
More than 100 known infections in Canada
England has been able to detect most cases in the latest outbreak, with more than 450.
Canada has detected 112 infections as of June 9, and federal health officials are expected to update the number this week.
The committee meeting next week will be made up of global experts, but the WHO director-general is making the final decision on whether the outbreak deserves the public health emergency label of international interest, known as PHEIC.
Experts have been pushing the WHO for faster action for several weeks, following criticism of the agency’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In addition to COVID and polio, other outbreaks of disease have been declared PHEIC, such as Ebola in 2014.
However, a committee may also withdraw from giving the alarm. When a WHO emergency committee was set up to consider whether a yellow fever outbreak in West Africa in 2016 deserved the highest level of threat from the agency, it was finally decided against.
WHO’s determination that an outbreak is a global health emergency may help accelerate research and funding to contain a disease.
Tedros also said the WHO is working with its partners to change the name of the monkeypox and its variants, as well as on a mechanism to help share available vaccines more equitably.
TARGET | Concern is growing due to the likelihood of multiple strains:
Two different strains of monkeypox are circulating, U.S. health officials say
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified two different strains of the monkeypox virus in that country and says the virus may be circulating undetected.
Some countries have begun vaccinating health care workers and close contacts of monkeypox patients with smallpox vaccines, a related and more serious virus that was eradicated in 1980.
The WHO issued new guidelines on vaccinating smallpox in monkeys on Tuesday.