LGBTQ leaders and local and state officials gathered Monday to demand more be done to ward off a monkeypox outbreak in San Francisco.
The state now has 250 cases, 86 of which are in the city, that’s 10 times higher than the number just a month ago.
“Almost 90% of the infections in the Bay Area are in San Francisco, and about half of the statewide infections are here in San Francisco,” said Senator Scott Weiner, who was joined by local health officials, Mayor London Breed and other community leaders to demand more monkeypox vaccines from the feds.
“The city is pretty much out of vaccines,” said Weiner.
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The city has requested tens of thousands of doses to meet the need, but says the next shipment is expected to have less than 4,200.
“In order to vaccinate our highest risk communities, we need about 35,000 doses, and so far we’ve received about 7,000,” said Wiener.
LGBTQ community leaders, who organized Monday's protest, said they hope calls to action will pressure federal officials to make monkeypox a bigger priority before infections become more widespread.
“What we’re asking for is that they ramp up production of the vaccine,” said Paul Aguilar of hte Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club. “We’re asking that it gets distributed and given to those who are most at risk and need it first – such as sex workers.”
Some said they see troubling parallels to the initial AIDS outbreak 40 years ago with federal agencies not taking the virus seriously enough and doing too little to help stop it.
“Forty years ago they ignored a virus, and thousands died,” said Aguilar. “Two-and-a-half years ago, they thought it was a hoax. And here we are. We haven’t learned from our lessons.”
There is some hope on the horizon. Federal regulators have now OK’d the shipment of about 800,000 more doses from a Denmark supplier.
But speakers on Monday said that's only half the battle. The other half is making sure the majority of those doses get to the specific places that need them most -- New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- where case numbers are increasing rapidly.
