Consider yourself warned. The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) is readying international “guidance” on how best to handle the global mpox outbreak, the organization’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared Thursday from his headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
The W.H.O. warning came as China announced it will monitor people and goods entering the country for mpox for the next six months and Pakistan confirmed the first case in Asia of a new mpox variant, a day after Sweden reported the first case outside Africa.
Tedros spoke after declaring a public health emergency of international concern is now in place over the upsurge of mpox in Africa, as Breitbart News reported.
He said the W.H.O. stands ready to respond and has orders being prepared for issue:
The Emergency Committee is currently working on temporary recommendations, which we will issue in the coming days, to provide guidance to address the acute risk of mpox in countries affected by, or at risk of, the disease.
In addition, I have extended for another year the standing recommendations that I issued when I declared an end to the previous mpox PHEIC last year. Those recommendations provide more general guidance to address the chronic risk of mpox globally.
Tedros went on to outline so far this year, 15,664 cases of mpox, with 537 deaths, have been reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) alone, already exceeding last year’s total, which was itself a record.
Formerly called monkeypox, the virus was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the DRC.
Director General of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (R) and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (L) confer at the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France on July 26, 2024. (Mustafa Ciftci/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Mpox is an infectious disease caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.
The disease causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions, and has previously been seen not just in Africa but other parts of the world as well.
The move by Tedros to warn the world came as the Swedish government announced the presence of the first confirmed case of a more severe mpox strain diagnosed outside of Africa.
Swedish Minister of Social Affairs Jakob Forssmed said in Stockholm: “We have now received confirmation during the afternoon that we have a case of the more serious variant of the virus”, reports Dagens Nyheter.
He was joined by Public Health Agency director Olivia Wigzel, who confirmed: “The case is the first caused by the virus variant that has been diagnosed outside the African continent”.