Just over half of the people in Ireland would receive the Covid-19 vaccine

About half of the people in Ireland would take a Covid-19 vaccine if there were one, according to a new survey.

The survey, conducted by Ipsos MRBI for the Irish Pharmaceutical Health Association (IPHA), found that 55% would take the vaccine, while 33% said they were not sure. 12% of those surveyed said they would not be vaccinated.

The World Health Organization has said that 44 candidate vaccines are under clinical evaluation and 10 of them are in the final clinical stage of Phase Three. This stage involves trials with hundreds of thousands of people.

The results of several of these vaccine trials have been encouraging with some aiming to apply for authorization starting in November.

The IPHA survey revealed that 60% of the men would take the vaccine, while half of the women said they would. The age group most likely to receive the vaccine were those over 65, followed by people between the ages of 35 and 44.

Younger people were the least likely to get the vaccine, with 19% of people ages 25 to 34 and 18% of people 18 to 24 said they would not take it.

The survey included 975 telephone interviews with adults over 18 years of age.

Oliver O’Connor, executive director of IPHA, said the world is still some way from an approved vaccine for Covid-19, but there is “reason for hope.”

“While we all want to see the back of the pandemic, it is not about how quickly we can get a vaccine. What matters is that it is safe and that it works, ”he said.

“These are the priorities of our industry, working with regulatory agencies. We must move at the speed of science. We encourage the public to get vaccinated, especially now that we are in flu season. “

Generally, it can take 10 to 15 years for a vaccine to get to market. The fastest vaccine to date, the mumps vaccine, took four years in the 1960s.

Talking to TheJournal.ie Recently, Dr. Fidelma Fitzpatrick, consultant and senior lecturer in microbiology at the Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI) said the pace has been “unprecedented.” She said there has never been such an intense focus on developing a vaccine around the world.

Fitzpatrick said he acknowledged that some people may be wary of receiving a new vaccine, and one that has developed so quickly.

“Knowledge is power here. I always tell people to go and read the facts for themselves, go to reliable sources to find out when they are making a decision, “he said.

There has never been a time when the entire world has been so focused on one type of vaccination program, so there will be great scrutiny of the safety of these vaccines. The goal of phase three trials is to find rare side effects that did not appear in phase one and two trials.

“This is not going to have a free pass, there is a lot to lose, the whole world is watching it so that regulators do not just move things forward.”