NYC to receive 10% of federal monkeypox vaccine order despite high local case load

New York City will receive about 10% of a new batch of monkeypox vaccine doses secured by the federal government, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office said Thursday, frustrating some local officials who pushed for the city to receive a larger piece of vaccine pie.

Through Wednesday, around 25% of the nation’s confirmed monkeypox cases had been reported in New York City, according to government data. The federal government has been sluggish in its efforts to distribute jabs for the excruciatingly painful but rarely fatal disease.

But on Wednesday, federal health authorities announced the approval of some 786,000 new doses of the Jynneos vaccine to be distributed across the U.S. About 310,000 doses had been delivered as of last week, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Xavier Becerra, the health secretary, said in a statement that the expansion of supply marked a “critical step” in the federal monkeypox response.

Monkeypox, historically confined to Africa, is believed to primarily spread through intimate contact and first emerged in New York City in May. Manhattan has been hard hit, and the virus has predominately spread in men who have sex with men, according to the city Health Department.

[ Feds approve 800,000 more doses of monkeypox vaccine, tripling national supply ]

Schumer’s office said New York City had landed roughly 80,000 doses, with the rest of the state receiving another 30,000, for a total of 110,000 shots. The vaccine, produced by the Denmark company Bavarian Nordic, was in transit to New York on Thursday, Schumer’s office said.

“For weeks, I have been on the phone with each and every agency working to overcome monkeypox,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a statement. “We know our biggest hurdle right now is that we need more vaccines.”

In the statement, Schumer acknowledged the federal government has “more work to do to fully contain the monkeypox threat,” but said New Yorkers waiting for jabs should breathe a “huge sigh of relief.”

But other local lawmakers added a different kind of sigh.

“It took the federal government 2½ months to finally bring a substantial number of vaccines to New York City,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat who is gay. “It’s best news we’ve heard in 2½ months. But the 100,000 falls short of what would be New York’s fair share.”

“I have been outraged by the sheer incompetence of the federal government’s response,” Torres said by phone. “And I wish more people were outraged by it.”

Rep. Mondaire Jones, who is also gay, said in a statment that the new doses offered a “a good start, but New York City will need more doses to stop monkeypox.”

“We account for over a quarter of cases nationwide, but we’re only getting 10% of the national vaccine supply,” Jones, of Brooklyn, said in the statement. “Federal inaction must not cost LGBTQ+ lives.”

As of Wednesday, New York City had reported 1,148 monkeypox cases, 93% of the statewide total. The federal tally stood at 4,639, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The numbers are seen as undercounts due to testing access challenges.

[ Rep. Ritchie Torres calls for probe into slow U.S. monkeypox response, saying ‘history is repeating itself’ ]

Local officials have pushed the federal government for weeks to increase the number of vaccine doses sent to New York.

In a call two weeks ago with Becerra and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mayor Adams pushed for vaccine distribution “proportional to the current burden of disease here in New York City,” he said in a statement.

And last week, Manhattan Borough Mark Levine took to Twitter to declare that New York CIty deserves its “fair share of vaccine.”

“The CDC must provide us with a share matching our level of need,” Levine, the former chair of the City Council’s health committee, wrote in a thread of posts. “We need to act aggressively now before this outbreak gets further out of control.”

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