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.
Gay men’s health advocates have been calling for expanded access to the vaccine for weeks.There is a great desire, he said, to get at least one dose of the two-dose vaccine before this weekend, which will provide at least some protection against spread, even among people not planning to have sexual experiences.The web appointment system should also have more appointments beginning Sunday, officials said.
It mostly spreads by skin-to-skin contact, but can also be spread by respiratory droplets from prolonged close contact or contact with shared objects like towels?
The likelihood of the virus being spread during sexual contact is high, but the risk of transmission in other ways is low.
While Covid-19 is a tiny RNA virus that can spread through aerosols, monkeypox is a larger DNA virus that is transmitted mostly through close physical contact and has a much smaller mutation rate than RNA viruses.
Joseph Osmundson, a microbiologist at New York University who is among a group of activists pushing for more access to testing and vaccination, said that there was “immense frustration in the community” about access to the vaccine, and he hoped that other cities would follow in New York’s footsteps and open clinics soon.At the same time, he said, health officials should make sure to better communicate the launch of clinics ahead of time to ensure broader access to the doses.But within a half-hour, scores of vaccine seekers started arriving, and a long line quickly formed, he said