The Congo Basin lineage will be renamed Subtype 1, and the West African lineage will be Subtype 2
The World Health Organization (WHO) gave this Friday new names to the two known variants of monkeypox, a disease for which it is also seeking a new name to counteract the stigma involved in identifying a pathology with an animal species, country or region.
The variant known as the Congo Basin (Central Africa) will be renamed Clade or Subtype One (I) and the West African variant as clade or subtype 2 (II)although this has two subvariants that will be identified by letters: clade IIa and clade IIb.
A clade is a grouping of organisms containing a common ancestor and all its descendants.
These names were proposed by a group of scientists convened by the WHO and among whom were virologists, experts in evolutionary biology and specialists from other fields of institutions from different parts of the world.
Now this group of experts continues to analyze what would be the best name to replace the “monkey pox”, So called because the first time this virus was identified was in 1958 among monkeys in a zoo in Denmark.
They have subsequently been identified variants important according to the place in the world where it has circulated.
The WHO has opened a public consultation so that people can come up with neutral names for this disease.
A spokeswoman for the organization said today that numerous proposals have been received, several of them “very interesting”. It is unknown if the experts have a deadline to propose a new name.