The city’s struggle with the rollout of the monkeypox vaccine for New Yorkers continued on Tuesday, when the website for scheduling appointments went down due to “heavy traffic.”
The New York City Department of Health announced Tuesday at 1 p.m. that more monkeypox vaccine appointments were available, but within half an hour, the department tweeted that the scheduling website was down.
Due to the high level of traffic, the scheduling site is currently closed. We are aware of the issue and are working to restore it quickly. https://t.co/cxbo5dePtt
— nychealthy (@nycHealthy) 12 July 2022
In a statement later in the day, the city’s health department said the site “gave error messages for many people” because of “heavy traffic” as appointments went online.
The department confirmed just before 4:25 p.m. Tuesday that all appointments made available had been booked, and said they would “advise New Yorkers when more appointments can be made.”
“This is just one more proof that demand is very high, and we will continue to work to make the vaccine available,” the city’s statement read in part.
“We apologize for the disappointment and are working to build stable appointment infrastructure as we make more appointments in the coming weeks as vaccine supplies increase,” the statement continues.
Tuesday’s hiccup with the procedure came after “technical difficulties” that prevented many people from scheduling an appointment for a vaccination last Wednesday.
Some New Yorkers had their vaccines scheduled earlier in the day, in what the department called a glitch that made appointments available “prematurely.”
“Website Releases” [Wednesday] The wax appointment was caused by Medrite, the company that runs the page. “It was an error with their page that caused the outage,” City Hall said in a statement on Wednesday.
The department later revealed that appointments made earlier in the day would be honoured.
Due to an unfortunate glitch, the appointments for the monkeypox vaccine were made available ahead of time. Rest assured, more appointments will be available this afternoon, and we’ll update here and on our website when they become available.
— nychealthy (@nycHealthy) 6 July 2022
The state health department said Tuesday that New York has reported 238 cases of orthopoxvirus — which the state health department refers to as “probable monkeypox” cases because of the rarity of all orthopoxviruses, generally speaking, and the presentation of symptoms. Confirmed orthopoxvirus. Cases, being analogous to monkeypox. According to the state health department, 223 of these cases are in the city.
The CDC says monkeypox is “rarely fatal,” but it can cause fever, headache, muscle aches and back pain, swollen lymph nodes, chills and tiredness. According to the CDC, it can also cause “a rash that can look like pimples or blisters that appear on the face, inside the mouth, and on other parts of the body such as the arms, legs, chest, genitals, or anus.”
Cases of monkeypox are spreading mainly among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, but the Department of Health says anyone can spread the virus through direct contact with a rash or sores.