BOSTON — Boston is opening Pride Month Monday afternoon with the City Hall Pride flag raising — and free monkeypox shots tucked right onto the same program.

The flag goes up. The needles go in arms. The kickoff does both.

BPHC says it’s responding to an uptick in mpox cases — formerly known as monkeypox — in Boston and across the country. There’s no widespread public-health emergency, the agency says, but cases have ticked up enough that the city is rolling out a vaccine push with partners through the summer.

The shot takes two doses, 28 days apart, and is 80% effective.

That one went viral this week. National headlines, social-media outrage cycles, the whole circuit. The office runs on a $920,702 annual budget and is right at home pairing Pride flags with public-health pitches.

The Public Health Commission has its reasons. The vaccine works. Mpox is real. The populations most affected by the disease deserve protection. Nobody is arguing the vaccine clinic shouldn’t exist.

What people might argue with is the choice to bundle that vaccine clinic with Boston’s biggest, most public Pride Month moment. Mpox spreads primarily through close skin-to-skin contact. In the U.S., the disease has predominantly affected men who have sex with men. The decision to put the vaccine clinic alongside the LGBT community’s most visible flag raising of the year is not an accident — it’s strategy.

It’s also a message. About who is expected to need the shot, and why the shot is showing up where it’s showing up.

The Mayor’s office and the Public Health Commission have signed off on the messaging. The flag goes up at 1. The shots go in arms by 4. Both are part of the same program.

More vaccine clinics are coming, the agency said, with city partners through the summer. Dates at boston.gov/vaccine as they get scheduled.