Donnelly says ‘about 1.9%’ of the population is vaccinated

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Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said that 94,000 vaccinations were administered Sunday night, 71,000 to frontline healthcare workers and 23,000 to residents and staff at long-term care facilities.

In a series of tweets, Donnelly said that “about 1.9%” of our population has been vaccinated. “We are on track for 140,000 doses to be administered next Sunday.”

He said that people who were among the first to receive the first dose of the vaccine will now receive the second.

The first person in Ireland to receive a Covid-19 vaccine was Annie Lynch, on December 29, and who, according to the minister, is in line to receive the second dose.

The Cabinet heard this morning that the 140,000 people who will have received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine next Sunday will include nursing home residents and about half of the country’s frontline healthcare workers.

Minister Donnelly also told colleagues that up to 3,900 people could receive their second dose of the vaccine this week.

This morning’s agreement, of a € 60 payment for each vaccinated patient by members of the Irish Medical Organization and the Union of Irish Pharmacies, paves the way for GPs and pharmacists to start vaccinating immediately.

The agreement will see the government allocate 91 million euros for vaccines to be administered to approximately 1.5 million people.

However, GPs and pharmacists are likely to start vaccinating once the European Medicines Agency approves the AstraZeneca vaccine, as expected, at the end of the month.

However, this morning there has been strong criticism of the Government’s strategy by some members of the Opposition.

Labor leader Alan Kelly said many hospital wards cannot function because what he called Covid front-line personnel was not prioritized in recent weeks.

While People Before Profit frontman Richard Boyd Barrett called the launch of the vaccine “a fiasco.”

Sinn Féin said there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that non-frontline hospital staff had received the vaccine early.

Party leader Mary Lou McDonald said confidence in the vaccination program has been damaged and said it is not acceptable that replacement doses can be given to family members of frontline workers.

He said there is a “need for a very, very clear guide in a timely manner, so that all those in charge of dispensing these vaccines safely and in an order of priority, are very clear what the instruction is in case they have spares. “

Ms. McDonald asked the “Minister of Health and all the other ministers to get down to business and do their job.”

He said his party is pressing for a “clear roadmap” on where the vaccination centers will be located and that there is good communication between GPs and pharmacists.

Meanwhile, the Irish Dental Association has asked the Government to start inoculating dental teams as a matter of urgency.

CEO Fintan Hourihan said vaccination of dental teams should begin this Saturday so that dentists can continue to provide essential healthcare services.

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Earlier today, Health Service CEO Paul Reid said that the examples of people who are not frontline healthcare workers receiving the leftover vaccines at Coombe and Rotunda hospitals “don’t do any of us any good. us, nor to the program “and the receipt of these vaccines” should not have happened.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne, Mr. Reid said that “the plan is clear on the sequencing” and did not think further guidance was needed on what part of the HSE workforce should be done at this time, but said that they issued further guidance on January 12.

“Everyone must learn from what happened,” he said, but believes that “it would be a shame to waste the remaining doses” and all facilities should “have a waiting list” for such cases.

He said the sequence of the launch of the vaccination has been agreed upon by the National Immunization Advisory Committee.

“They set the various sequences of the cohorts, or the population, according to priorities; according to risk; according to what we have seen as the transmission of the virus; according to what we see in deaths and mortality. Clearly stated in the strategy document “.

He said that the HSE uses this document to assign the number of vaccines that are assigned to hospital groups.

Meanwhile, the president of the National Immunization Advisory Committee said she understands why people are distressed to learn that additional vaccines were given to relatives at Coombe and Rotunda hospitals.

Professor Katrina Butler said vaccination centers had lists of people to vaccinate and backup lists to make sure no vaccine went to waste as there is more vaccine in the vials than people expected and due to the use of needles, it was learned that there were seventh doses in the vials.

Speaking about the same program, he said that this left people with the option to “use it or throw it away”, because the vaccine has a short life once made.

She went to great lengths to review the prioritization lists in order to use the additional vaccines, according to the NIAC advice.

Professor Butler also said she could not comment on reports that hospitals in the south and southeast have been assigned a higher number of vaccines than other areas.

Union calls for more clarity on vaccine deployment

SIPTU has said that there is a lack of clarity regarding who should receive a Covid-19 vaccine at health facilities.

On RTÉ’s Morning Ireland program, SIPTU health division organizer Kevin Figgis said the union has been approached by categories of staff, such as radiologists, who have shown up at hospitals to receive the vaccine, but who they have been rejected.

However, the same categories have received it in other facilities, he said.

Figgis said the HSE has corrected a number of cases in which the union raised concerns, but the situation underscores the confusion around the issue.

He said that recent media reports of excess doses being given to family members do not instill confidence that the “reduction plan” for the use of additional doses is being carried out as it should be.

A GP in Co Clare has said that the idea that there are leftover vaccines left when there are thousands of frontline workers who have not been vaccinated is “demoralizing and insulting.”

Dr. Máire Finn described what she said was the use-or-throw-it narrative as silly.

“I’m sure there would be hundreds of people within a five mile radius who would have been willing to come and take those shots,” she said.

Dr. Finn said she hopes there will be a good information-based HSE campaign to be implemented alongside the vaccination program as it would help manage people’s expectations.

He said it would also help GPs logistically if this campaign identified the cohorts of people who are likely to be called in to get vaccinated in any month or two-week period, as people could see for themselves when to get vaccinated.

Earlier, the chairman of the IMO’s committee of general practitioners said that general practitioners must be a component of the vaccine deployment if mass vaccination is to be achieved.

Dr. Denis McCauley said that as soon as the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine is approved, it can be implemented because it can be easily stored.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireand, he also said that people over the age of 70 and without pre-existing conditions could be vaccinated before Easter.

He said GPs will be asked to identify the groups that will receive the vaccine first and urged patients not to call their doctors, but to wait to be contacted.

He said GPs administered a million doses of the flu in a six-week period just before Christmas, adding that the reason they took six weeks was because the supply was “quite stuttering.”



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