SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) — The Coastal Health District has received its first shipment of monkeypox vaccines and will begin administering them Monday. 

It will distribute them to individuals 18 years old or older, who identify as a gay or bisexual male and who have had a sexual partner in the past 14 days who received a monkeypox diagnosis. Also, individuals must not have any signs or symptoms consistent with a monkeypox infection.

Appointments are required and will be available at CHD’s main clinic on 1395 Eisenhower Drive. To schedule an appointment online, click or tap here.

Earlier this week, WSAV spoke with Dr. Timothy Connelly, Internal Medicine Physician at Memorial Health who said that even though there might not be any confirmed cases in Savannah, it’s very likely that people are currently carrying the disease.

“The majority of monkeypox is in the Atlanta area right now. To my knowledge, we haven’t seen any monkeypox in the Savannah area,” Connelly said. “I will say that based on the epidemiology and how the disease is spreading, we almost certainly have monkeypox in Savannah even though we don’t have a confirmed case and if we don’t, it’s only a matter of time until we do.”

More than 100,000 monkeypox vaccine doses were sent to the United States just last week, with Georgia allocated to receive 3,000 of them.