OGUNQUIT, Maine — Tim Grady had been trying to get a monkeypox shot for weeks at his Manhattan home. He couldn’t get it until he came here on vacation.
“It’s really hard to get a date there,” Grady said. “So it’s great to be able to walk into a clinic here in Ogunquit and be able to get [a shot] in half an hour. »
Grady, 35, was one of 250 people — mostly LGBTQ men most affected by the virus — to get vaccinated at an Ogunquit clinic on Friday. The York County beach town is a popular destination for the LGBTQ community, which led to it being chosen for a first walk-in clinic.
Monkeypox was declared a public health emergency by President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday after a belated response in ramping up vaccine production. This resulted in the distribution of less than a third of the doses needed in the United States, according to a New York Times report. It was on the minds of some at the clinic on Friday.
Tanner Skilton, 30, of Portland, said he was concerned about the spread of monkeypox, and while he was pleased the Biden administration declared the spread in the United States a public health emergency on Thursday, he felt that more could have been done.
“As we’ve seen with the AIDS epidemic, people just don’t pay attention to diseases that primarily affect minority groups,” Skilton said. “Right now, monkeypox primarily affects gay and bisexual men and people in the transgender community.”
The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention has begun partnering with clinics to administer a “limited allowance” of monkeypox vaccines to men who have sex with men who have been exposed or are susceptible to it. be, Nirav Shah, the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday.
So far, three cases have been reported in Maine, including one in Aroostook, Penobscot and York counties, shah said. He expects more to be found here as testing increases.
About 98% of cases for which data are available have occurred in men who have sex with men, according to the World Health Organization, which says they are the main group affected everywhere except in parts of the world. ‘Africa. Although monkeypox is not considered a sexually transmitted disease, it is spread through close contact, which can include sexual intercourse.
Many described being vaccinated as a relief. They could now live their lives without worrying about contracting a disease that is often painful and can leave scars for life, they said.
Brian Dustin, 57, of Biddeford, said it would allow him to enjoy his trip to Provincetown, Massachusetts, another popular tourist destination for LGBTQ people and also one that has seen a number of cases of monkeypox. While he’s glad he had the chance to get vaccinated, he said the federal deployment left a lot to be desired.
“It was a little slower than it should be,” Dustin said.
But other people who received the vaccine were less critical of the actions of the Biden administration, noting that the virus had spread very quickly and unexpectedly across the United States.
The vaccine rollout took place at the Dunaway Community Center on School Street in downtown Ogunquit on a busy day in the summer destination. Many vaccinated traveled downtown after being vaccinated to socialize, shop and eat, or enjoy the beach.
The clinic resembled the COVID-19 vaccination clinics that have sprung up in Maine over the past two years. The coronavirus provided a “test” for these kinds of clinics, said Kyle Holmquist, family nurse practitioner at Kennebunk-based Local Roots Health Care, which hosted the clinic.
Holmquist said he wasn’t involved enough to comment on the federal monkeypox vaccination effort, but welcomed Maine’s response. Disease prevention is why he went to primary care in the first place, he said, and he was glad the state responded quickly given few cases.
“Having a massive vaccination campaign with so few cases actually occurring is really quite remarkable,” Holmquist said.