Monkeypox Vaccines Now Available In Forest Hills With Local Pol's Help

QUEENS, NY — After repeatedly calling for increased action against the citywide monkeypox outbreak, a Forest Hills Council Member is helping bring a vaccination site to the area.

Long Island Jewish Forest Hills, a Northwell Health hospital near Queens Boulevard, is offering monkeypox vaccine appointments on Thursday, Aug. 18 and Monday, Aug. 22 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., Councilwoman Lynn Schulman announced.

Top elected and health officials have expanded New York's virus response in the past couple of weeks after declaring various monkeypox states of emergency, but Schulman is among a group of leaders who've been calling for increased action against monkeypox since early July.

On July 11 the councilwoman — a member of the Council's LGBTQIA+ Caucus and chair of its Health Committee — co-authored a letter to Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control, urging her to help the city increase vaccines and testing.

"As members [of the LGBTQ] community, and as activists who remember the horrors of the HIV epidemic and the toll and trauma it took on our friends and loved ones, we are disappointed to see another instance of the government responding too slowly to a disease that impacts us," she wrote in the letter, which was signed by several other members of the Council's LGBTQIA+ Caucus.

Anyone can spread and contract monkeypox, but most confirmed cases of the virus have been among men who have sex with men and queer men, including transgender and non-binary folks, according to health officials.

Several days later, after the city's vaccine scheduling site crashed again amid high demand, the entire caucus sent a letter to Dr. Ashwin Vasan, the city's health commissioner, demanding a more robust, and transparent, vaccine distribution plan.

By the end of July, Vasan declared monkeypox an emergency as the city and state's top health officials pledged to expand vaccine access, in part thanks to a federal infusion of 80,000 additional doses.

As of Aug. 17, the city has recorded nearly 2,500 monkeypox cases, data shows.

Vaccine eligibility, for now, only applies to men who have sex with men, queer men and people who've had multiple or anonymous sex partners in the last 15 days. You must be 18 or older to get the monkeypox vaccine.

To make a monkeypox vaccination appointment at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills, click here. For more information about monkeypox, including vaccinations, click here.