Almost 250,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered to date, the Health Service Executive has said.
Up to Monday evening, 243,353 vaccines had been administered, 154,900 with the first dose and 88,453 people have received their second dose and are now fully vaccinated.
A total of 91,548 vaccines have been administered in long-term health care facilities and 150,789 to healthcare workers, the weekly HSE briefing on Covid-19 in Dublin was told.
Next week, the HSE says 79,500 vaccines will be given, but only 12,000 of those will be given to the over-70s, starting with those who are over 85. They will be administered at 84 GP practices across the State in 20 counties. The full list of locations for the vaccination rollout has yet to be announced.
HSE chief executive Paul Reid said Ireland is third in the EU per head of population - behind Malta and Denmark - for vaccinations administered to date. He said it will be a "very exciting week next week, we truly are moving into a new phase."
The vaccine will be administered in three large centres at Dublin City Univerity’s Helix Theatre which will be utilised by more than 100 GPs, the Munster Technological University in Cork and at a yet to be disclosed location in Galway city.
Vaccines will be administered to the over-70s next week starting with the over-85s of whom there are 72,500 in the State not living in residential care.
The following two weeks will see 42,000 weekly vaccines distributed to the over-70s, completing the rollout of the first dose to the over-85s by the end of February and then starting on the age cohort between 80 and 85 in early March.
The first doses for all the over-70s will be completed by mid-April and the second dose by the middle of May, it is envisaged.
Mr Reid said the 12,000 Pfizer BioNTech vaccines available to GPs for the over-70s next week is what is left of the stock after 40,600 Pfizer second doses are given to people in nursing homes. A further 20,000 AstraZeneca vaccines will be given to healthcare workers.
Fridge
The HSE was originally intending to give the AstraZeneca vaccine, which can be stored in a fridge, to the over-70s, but that was ruled out by the chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan. Instead, the Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines will be given to them and the AstraZeneca vaccine to healthcare workers.
“The plan is that everybody over the age of 70 should receive it effectively and securely. This is a very different logistical model for the Pfizer BioNTech,” he explained.
“It is a very different model of delivery so we want to do safely for next week. We want to build up the process that we have and then scale it up properly over the next two weeks.”
To date, about 250,000 vaccines have been administered in the State. This compares with 13 million in the UK, the equivalent of a million vaccines in the Republic.
Mr Reid said he understood why people might be envious of the speed of rollout in the UK.
“Quite frankly people are looking up the road and are seeing what is happening in the North of Ireland. The reality is that we are working through the European process. We are working through the various commitments through the EU,” he explained.
“We have been committed to more than 17.5 million vaccines through the EU programme. It has proven beneficial to us in the past through drugs and medical supplies and also in terms of pricing. That is a mechanism we are working through.”
‘Buddy up’
Dr Nuala O’Connor, the Covid-19 lead with the Irish College of General Practitioners, said there will be community vaccination hubs and GPs from different practices will “buddy up” together to ensure the roll out of the vaccine happens as quickly as possible.
She said GPs will have to start “small and slow and be safe” because it is a major exercise to distribute a vaccine to multiple sites around the country.
She added that next week represents an “incredible historic moment when we start to reach out to the over-70s in the community and give them hope. It is like the start of the recovery from Covid. We are looking forward to vaccinating this cohort of patients.”
The weekly HSE briefing on Covid-19 heard that the number of hospital acquired Covid-19 infections increased sharply in the third wave and the total number last month alone was nearly double than the total number in 2020.
Some 1,544 people contracted Covid-19 in hospitals in January. The total for all of 2020 was 789.
The number of healthcare staff off work as a result of Covid-19 has halved in the last fortnight from 6,600 to 3,350.
Mr Reid said the falling Covid-19 numbers are a “huge relief” for hospitals with Covid-19 patients.
The number of people with with Covid-19 in hospital as of Thursday morning was 984, the first time have dropped below 1,000 since January 8th. There were 169 people in intensive care units on Thursday morning.
