1:05
- ABC News
- August 17, 2022
How NYC's monkeypox vaccine rollout went wrong
More than 77,000 vaccine doses have been sent to New York City.
Eventually, the department switched over to VAX4NYC, the portal that was used for scheduling COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, said VAX4NYC should have been used from the start.
\"[The health department] should have used systems that anyone had been familiar with,\" he told ABC News. \"That was a tried and tested system and had been working fine rather than contracts with certain companies, where they've had glitches.\"
He continued, \"A new system that people had to learn on the fly when there was such demand, I think is not ideal when you're trying to be as efficient as possible with a resource that was in a very limited supply.\"
During a City Council oversight hearing last week looking at \"failures of New York City's technological response under critical demand,\" Matt Fraser, the city's chief technology officer, said the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene contracts with MedRite and Affiliated Physicians were drafted under the administration of former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
\"This vendor had been previously cleared by another administration,\" he said during testimony. \"Our look at this is that it's a vendor that's done similar work in the city for this purpose, and unfortunately, it did not work out this time.\"
Questions have also arisen over MedRite's role due to being cited for fraud in the past. In 2016, then-New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman settled with MedRite after paying for fake positive reviews on various websites.
\"I would just say that this is an important question to ask: how was the trust established that they would be able to deliver in an emergency situation when they've already been deemed a fraudulent company?\" Adalja said. \"They should have articulated the rationale. 'This is why we use it, and we know we're going to use it, or they should have said that upfront' They should be transparent about their decision-making process.\"
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