After early stumbles, the race to contain rapidly spreading monkeypox infections in New York is gaining traction as vaccine supplies grow and outbreak disparities connected to age, sex and ethnicity come into focus.

Outside New York City, 80 monkeypox cases across 16 counties posed the highest risk to Hispanic or Latino New Yorkers, who accounted for 35% of those cases as of last week, the latest demographic data show. By contrast, the group represents about 20% of the statewide population.

Further, men who have sex with men represented 74% of cases and bisexual men accounted for 15% of cases. Overall, about 64% of the cases hit ages 25 to 40.

Some of the earliest known cases outside New York City presented in June in patients at Open Door Family Medical Centers in Westchester County, where officials are now working to improve awareness of the heightened monkeypox risk to Hispanic/Latino people, said Dr. Daren Wu, chief medical officer.

“It’s just concerning and sad, and I think that’s one of the areas to try to reach those communities at a wider level,” Wu said, noting phone calls to at-risk patients seek to find undiagnosed cases and urge vaccination against monkeypox.

“If our patients are not aware of it and are feeling sick, they may not seek care and unknowingly contribute to the spread,” he added.

And though the federal government struggled to obtain enough doses of the monkeypox vaccine last month, supplies have improved recently, including the rollout Friday of 780,000 doses nationally.

About 110,000 doses went to New York, including about 30,000 outside New York City. Gov. Kathy Hochul also declared a state disaster emergency for monkeypox, specifically to make more medical professionals eligible to provide the vaccine.

“We will continue our ongoing efforts to secure more vaccines, expand testing capacity, and educate the public on how to identify symptoms and protect themselves,” Hochul said in a statement.

Prior to Friday’s vaccine shipment, U.S. Health and Human Services had sent about 62,000 doses to New York since the outbreak began in May, including about 16,500 doses to communities outside New York City.

Amid the shortages, monkeypox vaccine clinics last week in Monroe and Westchester counties had booked all available slots within a matter of hours, officials said.

The crush of demand underscored how New Yorkers in high-risk groups desperately sought protection from the viral infection that can cause painful rashes, sores and other flu-like symptoms but rarely result in hospitalization and death.

Six counties across upstate with monkeypox cases – Dutchess, Tompkins, Chemung, St. Lawrence, Orange and Niagara – had yet to receive any vaccine doses as of late last week, while authorities prioritized vaccinating people in the greater New York City area facing most of the state’s nearly 1,600 overall cases.

As thousands of additional vaccine doses become available in New York, additional vaccine sites are being added statewide. Westchester Medical Center, for example, plans to vaccinate people against monkeypox in tents repurposed from the COVID-19 campaign, Cioffi added.

The state Health Department also recently launched a new SMS-text notification effort to deliver the latest monkeypox information directly to New Yorkers. New Yorkers can sign up for text messages – which will include alerts about cases, symptoms, spread, and resources for testing and vaccination – by texting “MONKEYPOX” to 81336 or “MONKEYPOXESP” for texts in Spanish.