Mon­key­pox, al­so known as mpox, is no longer con­sid­ered a pub­lic health emer­gency of in­ter­na­tion­al con­cern (PHE­IC).

The ad­vi­so­ry was is­sued by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) af­ter the fifth meet­ing of the In­ter­na­tion­al Health Reg­u­la­tions (2005) (IHR) Emer­gency Com­mit­tee, held on Wednes­day re­gard­ing the mul­ti-coun­try out­break of mpox. The Com­mit­tee not­ed the sus­tained de­cline in re­port­ed cas­es glob­al­ly and thus WHO con­curred with the ad­vice that the event no longer con­sti­tutes a PHE­IC.

The com­mit­tee al­so recog­nised a 90 per­cent de­cline in re­port­ed cas­es with­in the last three months. How­ev­er, they not­ed that the virus con­tin­ues to be trans­mit­ted with­in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties.

A health min­istry stat­ed, “While there were no con­firmed cas­es of this virus in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Min­istry of Health will re­main vig­i­lant through its sur­veil­lance pro­grammes di­rect­ed against mon­key­pox and all oth­er in­fec­tious dis­eases to safe­guard the health of the pub­lic.”

The Min­istry of Health will con­tin­ue to keep the pub­lic up­dat­ed as nec­es­sary.