Four in every five adults in the State will be offered one or two Covid-19 vaccination doses by the end of June if pharmaceutical companies adhere to their agreed delivery commitments, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said.
He told the Dáil that 1.1 million doses of vaccine from three companies would be received by the end of March and that a fourth company Janssen would begin supplying vaccines in April.
The Minister said the Health Service Executive (HSE) expects to receive delivery of one million doses in each of the next three months.
More than 850,000 Covid-19 vaccines have been delivered to the Republic to date, with 680,000 doses administered so far.
Last week, 96,870 vaccine doses arrived, a drop compared with the previous week where the State received 144,840 doses, in part due to issues surrounding the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Supply from the company fell to 9,600 doses last week, as Ireland and a number of countries temporarily paused its use over rare blood clotting concerns, which have since been addressed.
Pfizer-BioNTech has made up the bulk of the State’s vaccine supply, providing 570,960 of the 855,360 doses delivered to date.
Pfizer, whose vaccine has complex storage requirements and must be kept at ultra-low temperatures, delivered about 60,000 doses each week in March.
As of Sunday, some 680,015 vaccine doses have been administered in the Republic, roughly 80 per cent of the available supply.
The Department of Health said an “appropriate buffer” of doses is built up and held back to ensure there is supply on hand for people to receive required second doses.
“Currently, about 95 per cent of available vaccines are administered within seven days of arrival in Ireland,” the department said.
The department’s weekly update on vaccine supply added that Moderna had requested half of its deliveries be held back at present to provide second doses.
Moderna has provided 68,400 doses to the Republic, as of last Friday.
AstraZeneca has delivered 216,000 doses, roughly a quarter of the State’s vaccine supply.
In the first week of March, 36,000 AstraZeneca doses arrived, followed by 84,000 the following week and then 9,600 last week.
The first groups to receive the vaccine were residents and staff in nursing homes, and frontline healthcare workers.
Currently people aged 70 and above are receiving the vaccine, with general practitioners vaccinating the most elderly in their practices first.
People who are at very high risk to Covid-19, such as those who are immunocompromised and cancer patients, are also in the current priority group to receive vaccines.
These vaccinations will be organised via hospital teams, with the HSE warning there may be delays identifying everyone in this group and contacting them to receive the shots.
Next in the priority queue for vaccines are those aged 65-69 with underlying conditions, which would put them at high risk if they contracted the virus.
This is to be followed by everyone aged between 65 and 69, other healthcare workers and vaccination programme staff.
Outbreaks
In the Dáil, Minister of State for Disability Anne Rabbitte said: "Almost 5 per cent of adult population is now fully vaccinated."
She said 35 people had died in long-term care settings for those with disabilities where there had been 317 outbreaks since the pandemic began. Ms Rabbitte added that of those, 149 occurred this year and 53 outbreaks remain open.
In response to questions from Sinn Féin health spokesman David Cullinane, Mr Donnelly said that from next month “we are not looking at incremental increase but a step change in the number of doses being administered”.
Speaking during his weekly Dáil update of the rollout of the vaccination programme the Mr Donnelly said that more than one in eight people had been inoculated.
He said while vaccination was “dependent on the pharmaceutical companies delivering to the agreement, if they do, four in every five adults in Ireland can be offered either one or two vaccine doses by the end of June”.
More transmissible variants had driven Covid-19 case numbers up and daily cases “remain stubbornly high”, he said.
He acknowledged that many feel “that this pandemic will never end” but said the end “is in sight”.
Serial testing had shown that positivity rates in nursing homes had dropped from 11 per cent in mid January to less than 0.2 per cent now and the number of cases among people aged over 85 had dropped by nearly half.
Labour leader Alan Kelly said Denmark has a similar population to Ireland and stated that it would vaccinate all over 50s by the end of May. Mr Kelly questioned if Ireland would match this and the Minister said that various countries made forecasts but predictions had to be caveated based on supply.
Mr Kelly criticised the Minister when he would not specifically state how many vaccines would be supplied next week and the week after. “It is extraordinary that you can’t stand up in the Dáil and state how many doses you expect.”
Mr Donnelly said they had the exact figures they expected but “the provision of that information creates real anxiety in people” because delivery dates could change at very short notice, with supplies expected on one day that might arrive the following day.
Both Mr Kelly and Social Democrats joint leader Róisín Shortall called on the Minister to sort out the recruitment of vaccinators. Ms Shortall said people complained of “being repeatedly asked the same questions”. Mr Donnelly said: “Absolutely I will look into it.” He said that more than 10,000 people had been recruited but he would take up the issue with the HSE because “that process should be as easy as possible” while still being secure.
Prioritisation
Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness said a statement was made on Wednesday that family carers being vaccinated would take it from someone else “but that simply is not true”.
He said there should be political leadership to respond to changes in the vaccination cohorts “when the case is made”.
Sinn Féin TD Darren O’Rourke said there was robust evidence of poor outcomes for people with pre-existing heart failure. He said the HSE’s national heart programme had made a submission to the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac) on cardiovascular cases.
He believed that an error had been made in having patients waiting in-house for cardiovascular surgery on cohort four and called for a review of the prioritisation list.
Mr Donnelly said Niac undertook a “very, very rigorous assessment but no one has a monopoly on wisdom on this issue” and reviews were ongoing.
