A group of global virologists and public health experts met on Monday and decided to now use a Roman numeral for the clade – or strain – and a lowercase alphanumeric character for the subclades or phyla.
The former Congo smallpox basin (Central Africa) will now be known as Clade one (I) and the former West Africa as Clade two (II). In addition, it was agreed that Clade II consists of two subclades, WHO said.
Scientists have called for a change in the way we talk about monkeypox and its strains, so that less discriminatory terminology is used to describe infections occurring around the world.
Scientists believe that changing the way we communicate about the disease will promote more sharing of knowledge about outbreaks and could help minimize the negative impact.
WHO officials said the name changes better align with current naming practices used today.
According to the WHO, the monkeypox virus was first discovered in laboratory monkeys – hence the name – at a Copenhagen research facility in 1958. Human monkeypox was first identified 12 years later.
The world health organization currently names new viruses with the aim of not offending any cultural, social, national, regional, occupational or ethnic group, according to a WHO statement sent on Friday.
The WHO is also consulting on a new disease name for monkeypox.
