The World Health Organization announced Saturday that the global monkeypox outbreak does not constitute a public health emergency of international concern for the time being.

WHO convened an emergency committee on Thursday to discuss whether the designation, which has been given to just six disease outbreaks since 2007, was appropriate for monkeypox.

"The emergency committee shared serious concerns about the scale and speed of the current outbreak," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

"Overall, in the report, they advised me that at this moment the event does not constitute a public health emergency of international concern, which is the highest level of alert WHO can issue," he added.

WHO said in another statement that the Director-General agreed with the committee's advice, though a few members of the committee "expressed differing views."