WHO Schedules Emergency Meeting Over Mpox Outbreak

The meeting will be held to see whether the virus is a ‘public health emergency of international concern,’ the WHO said.

A section of skin tissue, harvested from a lesion on the skin of a monkey that had been infected with monkeypox virus, is seen at 50X magnification on day four of rash development in 1968. CDC/Handout via Reuters

The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that it will hold an emergency meeting on mpox and the decision whether to declare the virus “a public health emergency of international concern,” its director-general confirmed over the weekend.

The emergency meeting will be held on Aug. 14 to assess whether the status of mpox—a virus previously referred to as monkeypox that has been spreading in about 10 African nations—should prompt the international emergency declaration, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on social media.