Mark Webber and Doug Brown rose before dawn to make the trip from Agoura Hills, arriving around 6 a.m. at the Leimert Park clinic in the hopes of getting vaccinated against monkeypox.
“We came out in the ‘80s. We remember when HIV blew through,” said Webber, 54, a Maryland resident who has been in Southern California to care for his late father.
As monkeypox has arisen as a health threat, “we take it very seriously.”
The line began to form hours before the Crenshaw Boulevard clinic began administering shots Wednesday, snaking through the parking lot of the St.
John’s Community Health site. Inside the clinic, health workers had split each vial of Jynneos vaccine into five doses, after federal officials gave the green light Tuesday to change the way the shots are administered.
In the broiling heat, St. John’s nursing director Gale Castillo walked down the line of patients awaiting their shots, explaining what to expect:
The vaccine would not be given subcutaneously — in the fatty tissue under the skin — but at a shallower level in the skin.
“If you’ve ever had a TB test? Same thing,” Castillo told them, displaying photos of the process.
The Jynneos vaccine, a shot approved by the Food and Drug Administration to protect against monkeypox,
has been in limited supply as Angelenos try to avoid the virus. The infectious disease is rarely fatal, but can cause fevers, aches, swollen lymph nodes and painful lesions