SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – San Francisco is running "extremely low" on doses of the monkeypox vaccine, the San Francisco Department of Public Health warned Wednesday.
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The announcement comes one day after city public health officials said they were "literally begging" for more vaccines as stock dwindled.
Awaiting federal supplies, some San Francisco sites administering monkeypox vaccinations are expected to run out Wednesday while others will join them by the end of the week, according to the department.
"SFDPH has urgently requested additional allocations of Jynneos from federal supplies and is waiting to hear how much the next allocation will be and when it will arrive in San Francisco," the Department of Public Health wrote in a statement.
As of Wednesday morning, SFDPH's Zuckerberg San Francisco General monkeypox clinic had 50 remaining doses, which they planned to administer on a first come, first serve basis. The clinic will then be shuttered for the remainder of the week.
"People will be turned away," SFDPH said.
So far, the department has given out 1,702 doses of the vaccine to San Francisco residents, with 68 known cases of monkeypox in the city.
"Due to a lack of vaccine supply — and what will continue to be a sluggish pace of vaccination due to limited supply going forward — we are veering toward a public health mess of uncontrolled monkeypox spread in our community and many other communities," Senator Scott Wiener said in a statement. "Failure to control this outbreak will result in intense — and completely unnecessary — misery for many people, particularly gay and bisexual men."
Last week, San Francisco received 2,308 doses to distribute throughout the city at more than 10 locations, including the public health department sites, community clinics — such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation's Strut clinic — and the Kaiser Permanente health system.
With the goal of eventually vaccinating every individual who could benefit from the shot, the SFDPH has requested 35,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine from federal supplies.
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