3% of the population has been vaccinated, as hospitalizations for Covid continue to fall

HEALTH MINISTER STEPHEN Donnelly told Dáil today that 3% of the Irish population has been vaccinated as of Sunday: 66,000 in long-term residences and 77,000 health workers.

Second doses are being given and will be intensified this week, he told Dáil.

Four of the 589 nursing homes were not included in the vaccination program due to the Covid-19 outbreaks at the facility, and some other residents of other homes were also not vaccinated due to their Covid status.

Those who did not receive the vaccine will receive it when it is safe to do so, Donnelly said.

Hospitalizations

As of last night, there are 1,620 people with Covid-19 in hospitals, with 212 people in ICU. The figures updated this morning should be updated on the Covid Data Hub this afternoon.

HSE chief Paul Reid said this morning: “Some early signs of minor relief in the number of hospitals from Covid-19. Yet our healthcare system remains under relentless strain.

“Many very sick and vulnerable people will need care for some time. Our ICUs remain too close to a tipping point. Please continue to stand guard. “

AstraZeneca Row

Donnelly told the Dáil that as of last night, AstraZeneca still couldn’t indicate how many doses it could ship as of mid-March.

The EU is locked in a dispute with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca over the supply of its vaccine to the EU in the first quarter of the year.

EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said there have been “constructive” talks with AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot after telling the company that it is contractually bound to ship vaccines that are produced in the UK. to 27 EU member states.

The impact on Ireland’s immunization schedule is still unknown: Ireland was due to receive 600,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the first quarter of the year. This could drop to half that number in the first quarter, according to the confidential settlement reports.

The EU is still expected to get the roughly 400 million doses of the Covid vaccine, but the dispute revolves around the timing of the vaccine in the first quarter of the year as the EU faces another block-wide Covid surge.

No EU member state yet knows how many doses of AstraZeneca it will receive this quarter, Donnelly said.

Epidemiological situation

Public health officials confirmed 1,335 new cases of Covid-19 yesterday, bringing the total number of cases to 191,182. There were 54 more deaths.

The positivity rate is 6.6% overall and 8.1% in the last seven days.

With reporting from Christina Finn.