By Bay City News
San Francisco public health officials said Wednesday they are running out of monkeypox vaccine and are urgently requesting additional vaccines from the federal government.
The city’s Department of Public Health received 2,308 doses of the Jynneos vaccine last week from federal supplies and distributed them to sites around the city, but many of those sites were already running out, and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital had just 50 doses left as of Wednesday morning.
City officials said the monkeypox clinic will have to close once the last doses are administered and will remain closed until more vaccines arrive.
As of Wednesday, there have been 68 probable and confirmed cases of monkeypox in San Francisco. The virus is spread through skin-to-skin contact or bodily fluids, and symptoms can include a rash or sores on the skin, as well as flu-like symptoms.
Public health officials noted that many members of the LGBTQ community in particular have sought out the vaccine. State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, criticized the federal government’s response to monkeypox, saying that “failure to control this outbreak will result in intense, and completely unnecessary, misery for many people, particularly gay and bisexual men.”
Wiener cited reports of a million doses stored at a facility in Denmark because the U.S. failed to conduct a timely inspection of the site and its certification expired as an example of the federal government's inadequate response to the virus.
“We need a tremendous amount of additional vaccine doses, and we need them immediately. The federal government’s failures threaten to deeply harm our community. Once we get through this emergency, we need accountability for these failures — failures that put people’s lives and lives at risk,” Wiener said.
Information about San Francisco's response to monkeypox, including vaccine locations, health guidance, and current case counts, can be found at https://sf.gov/information/monkeypox.
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