D.C. will make 3,000 appointments available this Thursday.

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DC Health announced on Tuesday that the city has opened a pre-registration system for individuals to book appointments for monkeypox vaccines, after sporadically announcing appointment availability for the past few weeks.

Individuals can visit the pre-registration website and input their information to be added to the list. When a vaccine appointment becomes available, pre-registered residents will receive an email and must claim the appointment within 48 hours. (Residents should check their spam mailbox as well.) According to DC Health’s announcement on Tuesday, 3,000 appointments will open Thursday, July 14.

The registration system asks residents to attest to their eligibility on an honor system — no proof is needed. Currently, the following groups (18 and older) are eligible:

  • Gay, bisexual, and other men 18 and older who have sex with men and have had multiple or anonymous sexual partners in the last 14 days); or
  • Transgender women and nonbinary persons assigned male at birth who have sex with men; or
  • Sex workers (of any sex); or
  • Staff (of any sex) at establishments where sexual activity occurs (e.g., bathhouses, saunas, sex clubs)

DC Health is encouraging all residents — even those who do not meet the eligibility standard right now — to register, as the criteria may be updated in the future as more vaccine becomes available.

The pre-registration system is a departure from how DC Health had been distributing vaccines for the past few weeks. The agency would  announce on social media, like Twitter, that a batch of appointments would be coming online in a few hours, and within minutes of opening, all appointments would be snagged. For example, last Tuesday, DC Health tweeted at 10:00 a.m. that 480 appointments would open for booking at 1:00 p.m. that afternoon; all 480 were booked by 1:06.

DC Health official Patrick Ashley tweeted that the new system would eliminate the mid-afternoon rushes, which privileged those who had the ability to refresh a webpage (or have a friend or family member do it for them.) As of Tuesday morning, D.C. reported 69 confirmed cases of monkeypox, making it a hot-spot in the U.S., next to California and New York.

The system is nearly identical to the pre-registration model the city used during the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout (if one can remember that far back), after the initial sign-up system ran into technical glitch after technical glitch.

For now, D.C.’s supply of vaccine is dependent on allocations from the federal government. Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that 144,000 additional doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine (used to prevent monkeypox) would be sent out to states on Monday, July 11. (The amount of vaccine sent to each state is dependent upon the amount of confirmed cases in that state.) According to HHS, a total of nearly 2 million doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine will be sent out of the course of 2022, and an additional 2.2 million during the first half of 2023.

Monkeypox, while it can be spread to anyone (via contact with open sores and bodily fluids, or prolonged face-to-face contact), is predominantly affecting men who have sex with men in the current outbreak. While there is presently no vaccine specific to monkeypox, the virus is similar to smallpox, meaning scientists have antivirals and vaccines that are effective in both preventing and treating monkeypox. Still, the scattered public health response both on a local and federal level has been insufficient, according to public health experts. There is still a shortage of testing, meaning cases may go unreported causing uncontained —  but preventable — outbreaks, and supply of vaccine is not meeting demand.

Previously: 
What To Know About Monkeypox Vaccination In The D.C. Region
What You Need To Know About Monkeypox In The D.C. Region

Filed Under: dc health, monkeypox, vaccination,