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A 79-year-old grandmother of ten will be the first person in the country to receive the Covid-19 vaccine later today.
The grandmother of 10, named Annie, is from the Liberties area of downtown and will receive the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine at St James Hospital in Dublin around 1:20 pm this afternoon.
Professor Brian MacCraith, chair of the Covid Vaccines Working Group, said this morning that the woman named only after Annie is “delighted” to be the first Irish person to receive the vaccine.
The launch of the Covid-19 vaccine begins today at four hospitals across the country, including Cork University Hospital.
After three days of storage, the first of 10,000 doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine that arrived in Ireland on St. Stephen’s Day will be administered at four acute care hospitals – Cork University Hospital. Beaumont and St James’s in Dublin, Cork and University Hospital Galway.
Beamount Hospital will receive around 500 doses of the vaccine in the next few days with similar figures as it will be administered in Cork and the other centers.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Professor MacCraith said other people who should get the vaccine today include an ICU nurse, a junior doctor and a Covid ward nurse.
Professor MacCraith said he believes it is “very possible that we will complete all nursing home vaccinations by February.”
He said that anyone in Ireland who wants the vaccine will, at best and when other vaccines are approved, will receive it in August.
“It will all depend on the manufacturing success of the companies, the delivery schedules. But certainly, if all things happen, you would be looking at that (August).”
The Government and the Executive of the Health Service have said that the vaccination program is starting in hospital settings to build confidence before the vaccine is deployed in the more than 580 nursing homes in the country starting next Monday, January 4.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said that around 40,000 vaccines are expected to be delivered per week in January.
This will be enough to vaccinate 3% of the population, and implementation will accelerate as more vaccines become available in February and early March.
Last night, the Health Department was notified of one more coronavirus-related death and 765 new cases.
The number of people who have died with Covid-19 in Ireland is now 2,205, while the cumulative total of confirmed cases is 86,894.
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