Prognosis
What Happened to WHO Renaming the Monkeypox Virus?
A health worker handles a vial of the monkeypox vaccine.
Photographer: Kobi Wolf/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
More than three months after the World Health Organization said it would combat the stigma and racism around the monkeypox virus with a new name, no decision has been made.
In August, the group began allowing people to submit new name ideas through an online portal. Since then, there have been over 99 proposals — including Rodentpox-70, Mpox, Human mediumpox, Bonopox and MOVID-22 — but no new news about whether any of them have been chosen or short-listed. A spokesman for the WHO said in an email it expects to receive reports from experts on new names “soon.”