World Health Organization

That appeal comes after the Chinese government announced nearly 60,000 virus-related deaths since early December following weeks of complaints it was failing to tell the world what was happening.

Malaria cases went up in 2020 and continued to increase in 2021, according to a WHO report. About 95% of the world’s 247 million malaria infections and 619,000 deaths last year were in Africa.

"Removing 'monkey' removes the stigma that monkeypox comes with," an expert tells NPR. But he questions why the World Health Organization will wait a year for the change to take full effect.

Immunizations are down significantly since the coronavirus pandemic began, according to a report. Meantime, there were about 9 million measles infections and 128,000 deaths worldwide last year.

The WHO chief remains optimistic but urges caution, noting that testing and sequencing rates remain low, vaccination gaps between rich and poor countries are still wide, and new variants continue to proliferate.

According to the World Health Organization report, the coronavirus pandemic caused many people with TB to go undiagnosed.

In its weekly report on the pandemic, the U.N. health agency said deaths fell by 22% in the past week, at just over 11,000 reported worldwide.

Subsequent variants of monkeypox will be named using Roman numerals for the clade, and lowercase letters for the subclade.

The action comes as WHO convenes its emergency committee to consider if the outbreak of monkeypox - mostly in Europe - warrants being declared a global emergency.

The World Health Organization recommended in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is needed into whether a lab accident may be to blame.