Public health officials in Provincetown mobilized early to protect the town’s residents and wave of summer visitors from the Monkeypox virus.
Reports the Boston Globe:
By early June it was clear the outbreak of monkeypox, a relative of smallpox that is rarely fatal but causes a painful rash that can last for weeks, was spreading through the gay community. First came reports of it in the Canary Islands. Then the UK. Then Montreal.
Jorgenson, the chief medical officer of Outer Cape Health Services, worried Provincetown would be next. And it was only a matter of weeks before the summer’s first real crowds would pile off the highway and the ferry dock into the crowded bars and nightclubs of Commercial Street for Independence Day weekend.
With memories of last summer’s headline-grabbing COVID outbreak still fresh, Jorgenson knew the community needed to act fast.
Though Provincetown is vulnerable to monkeypox, public health officials and advocates say the LGBTQ+ haven is also uniquely prepared to handle public health threats by reactivating networks built up during the AIDS epidemic and put to the test during the coronavirus pandemic, when the Delta variant triggered the first known major outbreak of COVID-19 among a highly vaccinated group of people there last summer.
“This isn’t our first day at the rodeo,” said Christopher Casale, Jorgenson’s colleague at the Outer Cape clinic.
Though monkeypox cases continue to be overwhelmingly concentrated among men who have sex with men, experts stress sexual orientation is not linked to the virus; everyone is susceptible. The first transmission event likely took place by chance at a party attended by gay men. Because the virus has principally been spreading through intimate contact, it has mostly remained in that community.
Under clear blue skies last week, Casale strode out of the health center in shades, a leopard print shirt, and matching shoes to walk four patients through the vaccination process in the clinic’s back parking lot.
He was running Provincetown’s sixth vaccine clinic in a week. In that time, they had given 700 first doses of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine, which consists of two doses given four weeks apart, and 140 more appointments were scheduled for that day. It was a “Herculean” feat, Casale said.
The quick mobilization was a result of close cooperation between health officials, politicians, and activists, including the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod and its leader, Dan Gates.
Gates had trawled through Instagram, individually messaging people to invite them to town halls and to get vaccinated. Community leaders enlisted bartenders and drag queens to spread information further, Gates said.
Now, during Bear Week, when thousands descended on Provincetown to celebrate the culture of the bearded and burly gay men known as “bears,” officials and activists exuded a clear-eyed calm and said they could keep everyone safe.
Read the complete Boston Globe report here.
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