GENEVA: The World Health Organisation has announced new names for monkeypox virus variants that are currently in circulation. This is to eliminate causing any cultural or social offence, the WHO said in a statement.

The new names were decided by a group of international specialists convened by the WHO.

Experts will now refer to the former West African clade as Clade II and the former Congo Basin clade (group of variants) in Central Africa as Clade I. The latter has two sub-clades, Clade IIa and Clade IIb, the latter of which had the majority of the variants circulating during the 2022 pandemic.

The new names for the clades should be adopted right away, the World health organisation (WHO) said.

To  avoid offending any cultural, social, national, regional, professional, or ethnic groups and to minimise any negative effects on trade, travel, tourism, or animal welfare, newly found viruses, linked diseases, and virus variants should be given names, the WHO said.

When the monkeypox virus was initially detected in 1958, it was given that name. Major variants were classified according to the geographical areas in which they were believed to be prevalent. The current multi-country monkeypox outbreak was formally deemed a public health emergency of worldwide concern by WHO in late July.

In 89 countries and regions globally, there have been 27,814 laboratory-confirmed cases of monkeypox, with Europe and the Americas being the most severely affected, according to the WHO's situation update on the outbreak, which was released on Wednesday.

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