Old video shared as WHO announcing end to 2024 mpox emergency in late August

Context

A video of WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus from 2023 resurfaced on social media in late August to falsely claim he had announced the end to the mpox public health emergency less than two weeks after first declaring it. 

The WHO issued its highest level of alert on August 14, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), after an increase in cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and an uptick in other countries.

In late August, posts surfaced featuring a clip of Ghebreyesus with claims that he had swiftly announced the end to the emergency.

In the video, Ghebreyesus says, in part: "Yesterday, the emergency committee for mpox met and recommended to me that the multi-country outbreak of mpox no longer represents a Public Health Emergency of International Concern."

One X post featuring the clip, with over 800 likes, posted on August 26, reads: "The head of the WHO backtracking has declared ("on the advice of the experts ") that monkey pox is now NOT a global health emergency. What happened in a week to change his mind ? . Have the patriots got the situation under control? [sic]"

However, the clip is old and unrelated to the recent mpox outbreak.

In fact

The WHO uploaded the same clip to YouTube in May 2023 when the organization declared an end to the mpox PHEIC at the time.

The 2023 WHO video shows Ghebreyesus wearing the exact same clothes, saying the same wording, and making the same facial movements as in the clip circulating online.

Ghebreyesus also posted the clip to his official Facebook page on May 11, 2023. Logically Facts, therefore, found the video to be a re-use of the 2023 clip.

A spokesperson for the WHO told Logically Facts on August 26 that the 2024 outbreak "currently remains" a PHEIC, adding that this marks the second time an mpox-related PHEIC had been declared by the WHO, with the first declared in July 2022.

There is no such announcement pertaining to an end to the 2024 mpox PHEIC on the WHO website or official social media channels at the time of writing. 

The verdict 

False. The WHO did not announce an end to the mpox Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on August 26, less than two weeks after the initial declaration. A video of the WHO's Director-General announcing an end to the alert dates to May 2023.