4,000 received the Covid-19 vaccine in the first days of implementation, says the Minister of Health

Updated 13 minutes ago

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE country’s Covid-19 vaccination program gets underway in nursing homes this week.

HSE Executive Director Paul Reid said residents and staff of 25 nursing homes will receive their first doses of the vaccine this week.

The launch of the state coronavirus vaccination program began last week when Grandma Annie Lynch, 79, of Dublin became the first person in the Republic to receive the vaccine on December 29.

“This week we will start in 25 nursing homes and 20 hospitals across the country,” Reid told RTE Radio 1’s Today with Claire Byrne.

He said they wanted to target the most vulnerable, residents and staff in nursing homes, in the next three weeks and continue with the second dose in the next three weeks.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said this afternoon that 4,000 people received the first dose of Pfizer / BioNTech Covid-19 in the first days of vaccination last week.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s News at One, Donnelly said: “We will be expanding that this week to about 35,000.

“So there are 20 hospitals, 25 nursing homes. And in the hospitals, it’s the healthcare workers, the front-line healthcare workers in the hospitals, in the community care, and we’re working hard to make sure that GPS is included in that as well. “

Donnelly said Saturday that all residents and staff of the nation’s 580 nursing homes will receive their first dose of the vaccine at the end of the month.

There are around 70,000 people who work and live in nursing homes.

Ireland should receive 40,000 Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines each week this month and next.

Reid promised that the health service would “keep up” to deliver the vaccine launch.

“Our first vaccine that we have available is the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine. We are seeing a projected delivery of 40,000 per week, ”he said.

“We will deliver 40,000 per week.”

He predicted that over the next six weeks the HSE would oversee the release of 240,000 vaccines, adding that the vaccine would be given to people seven days a week.

“This will be a seven-day program that will utilize all the hours that we have available in all of our healthcare settings,” Reid said.

He said that the program had started on December 29 and that it had continued every day throughout the new year and would continue.

The HSE has set a goal for all nursing home residents and staff to have received both doses of the jab by the end of February. But potential outbreaks of the virus in nursing homes are expected to affect that goal.

The latest figures show that there are now 744 people in the hospital with Covid-19.

A record 4,962 new cases of the virus and seven additional deaths were confirmed on Sunday.