Demand for Monkeypox Vaccine was high as the city began offering the vaccine at one Chelsea clinic, where a long line formed and people were turned away
Facing a growing outbreak of the monkeypox virus, New York City health officials expanded access to a monkeypox vaccine on Thursday, offering it to a new group of people who may be at higher risk: men who have had multiple or anonymous male sexual partners over the last two weeks. New York City is the first American jurisdiction to broaden access to the vaccine beyond close contacts of people infected, following similar moves in the United Kingdom and Canada.
Public health officials globally have been scrambling to craft an effective response to the outbreak, which has been spreading in dozens of countries since mid-May, particularly among networks of gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. New York City reported 30 cases of the monkeypox virus as of Thursday. Nationally, 173 cases had been reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Globally, there were more than 3,300 cases of the disease reported in 42 countries outside of the African regions where it is endemic, in the largest ever global outbreak of the disease. No deaths have yet been reported in the outbreak outside of Africa, but 72 deaths have been reported since the start of the year in the endemic African regions.
The opening of the first clinic to offer the vaccine in New York City on Thursday was not announced publicly beforehand. Instead, after a news release went out at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, the news spread on social media and through word of mouth about the vaccine’s sudden availability. There is a limited supply of the preferred vaccine to fight monkeypox, which has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It is manufactured in Denmark and is known as Jynneos in the United States. Though the federal government owns about 1.4 million doses, Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, said that there were only about 1,000 doses of vaccine on hand for the city’s residents
Source: This news is originally published by nytimes