The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that Monkeypox is an evolving health threat so it cannot be considered a global emergency yet.
Expressing concern over the rapid spread of the disease, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the statement on Saturday adding further that the officials are closely monitoring the outbreak, according to Reuters.
"I am deeply concerned about the monkeypox outbreak, this is clearly an evolving health threat that my colleagues and I in the WHO Secretariat are following extremely closely," Tedros said.
The WHO chief has also advised governments across the world to boost contact tracing and testing to ensure that high risk patients have an easy access to the appropriate treatments and vaccines.
It is believed that the UN agency had met with international experts and upon discussion decided to define the "global emergency" tag, to only be applicable for the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent rise of polio, CNBC reported.
There are some global experts who are criticizing this decision as they made it known before the meeting that the situation meets the criteria to be referred to as an emergency.
As per WHO data, in the last six weeks at least 3,200 confirmed cases of monkeypox from more than 50 countries where it does not usually spread have been reported.
While the vaccines and antiviral treatment is available to combat the disease, there is a very limited supply.
