The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday reconvened its Monkeypox Emergency Committee to assess whether the outbreak should be classified as a global health emergency – the highest alarm it can sound.

But there is no timetable for when the outcome will be made public.

The committee first met on June 23 and decided against declaring it a so-called Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). A majority of the experts advised the WHO's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the situation, at that point, had not met the threshold.

The situation has been worsening as global cases passed 14,000, with six countries reporting their first cases last week, according to the WHO.

A surge in monkeypox infections has been reported since early May outside the West and Central African countries, where the disease has been endemic.

"I need your advice in assessing the immediate and mid-term public health implications," Tedros told the start of the meeting on Thursday.

If the committee advises Tedros that the outbreak constitutes a PHEIC, it will propose temporary recommendations on how to better prevent and reduce the spread of the disease and manage the global public health response. 

Information battle

About 98 percent of reported cases "are among men who have sex with men – and primarily those who have multiple recent anonymous or new partners," Rosamund Lewis, the WHO's technical lead for monkeypox, told a press conference on Wednesday.

They are typically of young age and chiefly in urban areas, according to the WHO.

Tedros said Thursday that this posed a challenge, as in some countries," the communities affected face life-threatening discrimination."

"There is a very real concern that men who have sex with men could be stigmatized or blamed for the outbreak, making the outbreak much harder to track, and to stop," he told the meeting.

Tedros said the first committee gathering helped delineate the dynamics of the outbreak, but he remained concerned about the number of cases.

"As the outbreak develops, it's important to assess the effectiveness of public health interventions in different settings, to better understand what works, and what doesn't," he said.

Tedros also said information coming from endemic countries in Africa was "very scant," making it hard to characterize the situation in the region and design interventions.

A viral infection resembling smallpox and first detected in humans in 1970, monkeypox is less dangerous and contagious than smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980. 

(With input from AFP)