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Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said the first batches of AstraZeneca will start arriving this weekend, starting with 21,600 starting doses.
“There will be 190,000 doses in total arriving in February,” he told RTÉ’s News At One.
“They will be administered immediately.” He said front-line healthcare workers dealing with patients will start receiving it early next week.
Caregivers in formal settings are included in the second group of frontline health workers and family caregivers will be vaccinated in whatever cohort they are currently in.
Based on figures from Wednesday night, the minister said around 220,000 vaccinations have been completed, 130,000 of them for healthcare workers and the rest for residents of long-term care facilities, who have more 85 years old.
Donnelly said most of the dose two of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will have been administered by the end of this month.
The launch from 85 through GPs will begin the week from February 15. He said that 70% of GPs will be able to do this in practice and solutions will be found for the remaining 400.
Anyone who does not have a GP should contact the HSE Helpline at 1850 24 1850.
When asked about quarantining the hotel for arrivals to Ireland, Stephen Donnelly said his department and the Attorney General’s office would have legislation ready for discussion at the Oireachtas “very soon”.
The minister said that anyone who returns to the country must self-quarantine for 14 days. He said that gardaí will participate in enforcing this in people’s homes. “There will be checks and it is actionable.”
Anyone who fails to comply faces fines of up to € 2,500 or six months in prison, or both.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly says the first batches of AstraZeneca will start arriving this weekend with 21,600 starting doses ¦ Read more: https://t.co/4DtAYo9yb7 pic.twitter.com/lZG2Rrn0RQ
– RTÉ News (@rtenews) February 5, 2021
The Garda Sergeants and Inspectors Association said its members have yet to receive guidance on how the government’s home quarantine plan will work.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne, AGSI Secretary General Antoinette Cunningham, since the beginning of the pandemic more than 50 legal instruments have been delivered to the Garda.
Members were expected to implement them “sometimes with very poor guidance documents and sometimes without any training.”
He added: “We do not have operational guidelines, we do not have regulation, we do not know what the criminal provisions are, we do not know how those provisions will be enforced.
“We don’t know what the level of participation will be, but it will have to be very clear because the risks are very high.”
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Earlier, the deputy chief medical officer said it is vital that people with Covid-19 symptoms isolate themselves and contact their GP immediately.
Dr. Ronan Glynn made the appeal after it emerged that one in two people takes three days or longer to present for testing after symptoms appear.
He also said that there has been a large increase in a number of workplace outbreaks in the past four weeks compared to the end of 2020.
Meanwhile, the National Public Health Emergency Team has warned that the next few weeks will be difficult and that as the number of cases falls below 1,000 a day, progress will appear to slow.
The number of Covid-19 positive patients at the hospital dropped to 1239 at 8 p.m. last night, 38% below the mid-January peak.
Of these, 183 patients were in intensive care units, 17% less than the peak of 11 days ago.
But 280 very sick Covid-19 patients are also receiving advanced respiratory treatment outside of ICUs.
Around 500 to 600 hospital beds are closed due to infection control or staff absences and 1,615 public patients are now being treated in private hospitals to ease the pressure.
Daily Covid-19 case numbers are halved every eight to 12 days.
HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid described it as a steady improvement but cautioned that it will take longer than anticipated or desired for some normalcy to return.
Speaking at a press conference last night, NPHET Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group Chair Professor Philip Nolan said there was a stable level of exponential decline of -6 to -9% per day.
The reproduction number of the virus is now below one, in the region of 0.5-0.8.
Professor Nolan said that the incidence is declining rapidly in all age groups and that there has been extraordinary progress in people aged 19-24.
For people 85 and older, he said the incidence is very high and decreasing very slowly, and is sadly associated with significant mortality.
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