Mayor Eric Adams raised alarm about New York City’s monkeypox vaccine “supply constraints” in a phone call with two of President Biden’s top public health officials late Tuesday as the city once again ran out of shots against the viral disease.
In a statement Wednesday morning, Adams said he and his health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, pleaded for more help in the call with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky.
“We discussed the supply constraints that New York City is facing and the urgency to expand our vaccine access footprint to more people, in more neighborhoods, through more partners and providers,” Adams said.
The mayor noted that the city has emerged as “the epicenter of the monkeypox epidemic,” and said he urged the Biden advisers to put an emphasis on quickly shipping more vaccine doses to New York.
“(We) shared our commitment to expeditiously address the current shortage through upcoming allocations in ways that are proportional to the current burden of disease here in New York City,” he said.
The call between Adams and the federal officials comes as the Biden administration is facing mounting criticism over its foot-dragging on importing millions of U.S.-owned doses of monkeypox vaccine that are stuck in Denmark due to an inspection slipup by American regulators.
The Danish dilemma stands in contrast to severe vaccine supply shortages in New York City, where at least 336 cases of monkeypox had been detected as of Wednesday afternoon.
The city Health Department ran out of its latest allocation of monkeypox vaccine shortly after announcing doses were available Tuesday.
“All available monkeypox vaccine appointment slots have been booked,” the Health Department tweeted less than four hours after making the appointments available online.
In a sign of heightened demand, so many New Yorkers tried to secure appointments Tuesday before supply ran out that the Health Department portal crashed — the second time in a week that has happened.
Speaking at an unrelated press conference Wednesday morning, Vasan took responsibility for the crash.
“We apologize for the problem yesterday. We apologized for the problem last week. It shouldn’t happen,” he said.
The virus, which is spreading primarily among men who have sex with men, causes blister-like rashes, fever and other symptoms.
So far, only about 7,000 monkeypox vaccine doses have made their way to the city since the viral disease began spreading here earlier in the summer. Local health officials have said another 14,500 are expected to come online at some point this week, and Vasan promised the vaccine appointment portal system will be fixed by then.
“Those mistakes shouldn’t happen, and so we’re working to correct those,” he said.
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