On Aug. 12, 2022, a group of global experts convened by WHO agreed on new names for monkeypox virus variants, as part of ongoing efforts to align the names of the monkeypox disease, virus and variants ﾖ or clades ﾖ with current best practices. The experts agreed to name the clades using Roman numerals.

he new naming convention comprises Clade I, Clade IIa and Clade IIb, with the latter referring primarily to the group of variants largely circulating in the 2022 global outbreak.