New Yorkers stood in a long line on Sunday (July 17) to get themselves vaccinated against monkeypox. The city has become an epicentre of outbreak of the disease in the US. The city lacks adequate number of doses and AFP quoted people standing in line as saying that they felt lucky to have got appointment for vaccination. 9200 slots became available on city’s dedicated website on Friday. Within seven minutes, the slots were full. The page had crashed three days ago due to very high traffic.
“It was frustrating, largely because especially with Covid, you’d think that we would have more of a structured process or vaccine rollout,” Aidan Baglivo, 23, told AFP. “There just wasn’t really anything.”
Number of monkeypox infections rose last week in New York, a city of more than eight million people. On Friday (July 15), number of infections reached 461 new since the start of the outbreak. On Monday last week, this number was at 223.
Robert, who declined to give his last name, told AFP he sat at his computer refreshing the website “like a crazy person” until he got a slot.
“This shouldn’t be an issue because there’s already a vaccine, and it (the rollout) should be… more efficient to prevent it from becoming more of an issue,” said the 28-year-old. His partner and his best friend have not been able to get a vaccine yet.
Neither his partner nor his best friend have been able to get a vaccine.
“Every additional day where there’s not more people being vaccinated is a bummer.”
Monkeypox spreads through close physical contact and anyone can get infected. However, the Jynneos vaccine is currently reserved for men who have sex with men. This section of society has seen a large number of infections.
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