RICHMOND, Va. -- The Virginia Department of Health is now reporting 175 total cases of monkeypox in the commonwealth, with 10 cases said to be reported in the Central Region.
As of right now, the Richmond-Henrico Health Districts report to have vaccinated about 300 people, and have 180 vaccine doses still available to administer.
However, the district reports 3,700 vaccine interest forms have been submitted so far.
Even though RHHD plans on requesting more vaccines on a week-by-week basis, RHHD Health Director Dr. Elaine Perry said there's no way to determine the wait time between when someone will fill out a vaccine interest form and when, or if, they'll be slotted for a vaccine appointment.
"We know that the vaccine is limited, capacity is limited, capacity to vaccinate is limited," Dr. Perry said.
"There are people who have filled out the vaccine interest form who don't meet any of the current risk categories, so will likely not be vaccinated unless we were to get in a situation in this country, in the state, and in our community, where vaccination was available more broadly, not relying just on those who are risk."
Perry said those who are given top priority are those who have been exposed to someone with a confirmed case of monkeypox, since they need to be vaccinated within 4 to 14 days after exposure. Those at higher risk include men who have sex with men, but exposure can also happen with skin-to-skin contact, and even through respiratory contact in certain cases of prolonged exposure.
"Most of the transmission is among men who have sex with men, and particularly in circumstance where they may be having sex with people that they don't know," Perry said. "We are focusing on people who are at even higher risk because they're immunocompromised and I think that's really important to not as well."
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As or right now, access to monkeypox vaccines outside of health departments are slim. Perry said RHHD is actively working to distribute vaccines to clinics and physicians' offices to make vaccination easier and quicker. However, finding providers that are available to distribute vaccines quickly poses a challenge.
"There are some guidelines in term of, even for us, like if we get the vaccine, VDH, the state health department, wants us to use it within 10 days so we need to work with people who can do the same thing, who can turn around the vaccine and get shots in arms pretty quickly."
Health Brigade, a clinic that works with at-risk patients, told CBS6 it had about 20 patients express interest in a monkeypox vaccine. Their information was submitted to VDh, who then provided information to patients about where to get their vaccine based on location.
Dr. Perry said more clinics or physicians are ramping up testing efforts to spot the signs of monkeypox early, but said if more showed interest in getting vaccines, it would not create a bottleneck at health departments.
"One of the challenges that we're finding is that for a healthcare professional who may have a very small eligible patient population that may not be quite the same incentive to undertake monkeypox vaccination for such a smaller subset of their patient population, as opposed to say, COVID-19."
VDH told CBS6: "The first round of Jynneos vaccine allocations from the CDC, Virginia was allotted 15,540 that will be available for order in three waves. In the first round of orders, VDH was able to draw down 40% of that total or 6,216 doses. Those doses will begin arriving in local health districts in the next 5-7 days."
Those who are believe they are at high risk can fill out this interest form or call 804-205-3501.
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