New York City and San Francisco are the first American cities to proclaim a state of emergency after the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global issue. There are 1,251 cases in NYC while 261 are confirmed in San Francisco.
Both cities have announced the intent to take immediate action; San Francisco already has 8,200 doses of the Jynneos smallpox/monkeypox vaccine ready to go.
According to Dr. Mary T. Bassett, the state commissioner of health in New York, monkeypox infections are now considered to be an Imminent Threat to Public Health.
In a statement, Basset said:
“This declaration means that local health departments engaged in response and prevention activities will be able to access additional State reimbursement, after other Federal and State funding sources are maximized, to protect all New Yorkers and ultimately limit the spread of monkeypox in our communities.”
San Francisco Mayor London Breed echoed the statement and pointed to her covid response as a precedent for her monkeypox response.
Breed wrote in a statement:
“During covid, we used our Local Emergency to pop up emergency vaccine sites. To deploy workers to immediate needs. To be able to move government bureaucracy nimbly to confront the virus. That’s the kind of actions [sic] this Local Emergency will allow us to do.”
She announced an additional 35,000 vaccines are on the way and kept her focus on the LGBTQ community.
She wrote, “That is not nearly enough, and the reality is we are going to need far more than [sic] 35,000 vaccines to protect our LGBTQ community and to slow the spread of this virus.”
San Francisco declares state of emergency over #monkeypox.
"We are in desperate need of more vaccines and in desperate need of more treatment," Mayor @LondonBreed.@kron4news pic.twitter.com/Mv4KNbVBqX
— Justine Waldman (@JustineWaldman) July 29, 2022
The federal government announced Wednesday that 786,000 vaccines will soon be available nationwide.
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