The Big Apple’s health department is finally switching to a city-built mass vaccination system to handle future monkeypox appointments, a change that equates to a major course correction from the agency amid growing despair over the outbreak.
It comes just hours after DOHMH officials investigated Post Cast skepticism over repeated explanations as to why they chose to once again use tech-challenged private vendors on Wax4NYC, which city employees have been accused of. And contractors created those companies to replace them. And unite your vaccination efforts during the early days of the coronavirus vaccination campaign.
DOHMH revealed the switchover on Thursday when it posted the link for the next set of appointments, which are due to be released at 6 p.m. Friday.
When asked to confirm the change, a spokesperson for the agency replied with a simple “yes.”
Initially, the agency sought to contract the work, as it did during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic — first to Meditrate, a $36 million COVID-era contract to provide vaccine-related services to DOH. keeps.
After a struggle during the first two of Madrid, the officials transferred the contract for the third round of appointments to affiliated physicians.
But the change led to the DOH’s biggest monkeypox-related technology meltdown as New Yorkers struggled to be able to log into the website for more than an hour, only then to contend with additional crashes and glitches. Which made it extraordinarily frustrating to book an appointment.
Officials had argued repeatedly – as recently as Wednesday, repeated claims by Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan – that the city-built system was a poor fit for monkeypox vaccination because it could handle dozens of sites at once, while the shots were Only three clinics were set up to address the issue. ,
A former city official said, “It is astonishing that a year later, the city is scrambling for vaccinations and running that they are repeating every single mistake.” “The city cannot control how many monkeypox vaccines they get. But they can control to make sure they have a website that doesn’t crash.”