WHO Declares Monkeypox A ‘Health Emergency’

July 23, 2022

The World Health Organization declared monkeypox to be a “public health emergency of international concern” today [July 23].

Thousands of cases have been reported across over 75 countries, and that includes Bermuda, with the Ministry of Health confirming earlier this week that Bermuda has our “first confirmed case of monkeypox.”

The New York Times reported, “For the second time in two years, the World Health Organization has taken the extraordinary step of declaring a global emergency. This time the cause is monkeypox, which has spread in just a few weeks to dozens of countries and infected tens of thousands of people.

“Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director general, on Saturday overruled a panel of advisers, who could not come to a consensus, to declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” a designation the W.H.O. currently uses to describe only two other diseases, Covid-19 and polio.

“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria” for a public health emergency, Dr. Tedros told reporters.

CNBC report, “The World Health Organization has activated its highest alert level for the growing monkeypox outbreak, declaring the virus a public health emergency of international concern.

“More than 16,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported across 75 countries so far this year, and the number of confirmed infections rose 77% from late June through early July, according to WHO data.

“Five deaths from the virus have been reported in Africa this year. No deaths have been reported outside Africa so far. Most people are recovering from monkeypox in two to four weeks, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

“The WHO last issued a global health emergency in January 2020 in response to the Covid-19 outbreak and two months later declared it a pandemic.”

WHO defines a public health emergency of international concern [PHEIC] as “an extraordinary event” that constitutes a “public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease” and “to potentially require a coordinated international response.”

CNN report, “There are two ongoing public health emergencies: polio, which began in 2014, and Covid-19, starting in 2020. Four other PHEICs have been declared since the regulations were put into place: H1N1 influenza from 2009 to 2010; Ebola from 2014 to 2016 and from 2019 to 2020; and the Zika virus in 2016.”

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  1. Brian Fog says:

    Great. Let’s lockdown, coerce vaccinate and try to destroy the remaining small businesses that somehow managed to make it through Covid.

    • saud says:

      You don’t need a new pandemic to destroy Bermuda.
      The racist, homophobic and Xenophobic PLP have been doing that since 1998.