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The Irish vaccination program and the launch of the Pfizer / BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine will begin on Tuesday, December 29, said HSE Executive Director Paul Reid.
Reid told RTÉ’s This Week program that he expected the first vaccinations to take place on Tuesday, a day ahead of schedule. Reid spoke after the first shipment of 10,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine arrived in Ireland on Saturday.
When asked why Ireland was not immediately implementing the program like other European nations, Mr. Reid said the HSE’s top priority was to start vaccinating people safely and effectively.
“We want to build trust early and right away with our own vaccine implementation process. We will start at four hospital locations with some very elderly residents. “
He said the initial three weeks would focus on a complete vaccination “sweep” of the nursing homes, followed by another three-week period in which the nursing home residents would receive their second injection from Pfizer. This first group to receive the vaccine is “very vulnerable” and the consent process is “quite complex,” he said.
Some 180 people have been trained to carry out vaccination in the community, while another 1,500 vaccines will be available in the acute care hospital system, Mr. Reid said. The HSE will then extend its vaccination program to GPs and pharmacies, he added.
Another 30,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine are due next week and 40,000 doses each week through January and February, Reid said, adding that the state was “in dialogue” with Moderna about its delivery and deployment schedule.
‘We will catch up’
Meanwhile, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said he is not sure why Covid-19 vaccines are being rolled out in Ireland at a slower rate than in other countries, but insists the state will “catch up.”
“I don’t see it as a race. I think it’s important that we get it right, ”he told Newstalk’s On The Record show on Sunday when asked about the delay.
When asked why the vaccine that arrived in Ireland on St Sephen’s Day would not be distributed until December 30, he said: “I’m not 100% sure”, but that “it takes a couple of days to organize things” .
“While it could have been done with some people in the early days, the authorities thought it was better to start on Wednesday, start well,” he said.
“We have 10,000 doses. We will have approximately 40,000 doses each week starting in January, ”he said, adding that“ people who live in long-term care facilities, nursing homes and also the staff who work there ”would be the first to be inoculated.
“I think we will start a little slower, but we will catch up. We are part of the European system. We receive 1.11% of the vaccine and that is proportional to our population. I think we will start a little slower than other countries ”.
Varadkar said he anticipated that the Moderna vaccine will be approved for use on January 6.
“That is not part of the current schedule that you see in today’s newspaper and there seems to be a good chance that the one for AstraZenaca will be approved at the end of January and that is particularly important because we asked a lot of them, more than we did Pfizer “.
He said the vaccination schedule “will accelerate as those other vaccines come online.”
hope
Professor Sam McConkey, an infectious disease consultant, said Sunday that he was “very confident” in the safety of the Pfizer vaccine and stressed that the public should not be concerned about the safety of the vaccine.
“I think we can say with great, great confidence that this is a safe product,” Brendan O’Connor of RTÉ told the program. “It is clear that the Pfizer vaccine prevents mild and moderate disease in healthy young people. Now, of course, the mild, modern disease is not what we are concerned about, it is death in 90-year-olds. How confident are we that it will be 90% effective in preventing death in 90-year-olds? We don’t know yet, but it looks like it will prevent mild and moderate illnesses and probably some deaths.
“There is a time when you have to move forward with safety awareness, confidence in safety, and some very strong evidence that it prevents mild and moderate illness and a pointer toward preventing death.
“So I feel like this is a moment of celebration. It’s a new year, it’s Christmas, we need some hope. The days grow longer, the sun is shining, the storm has passed, and vaccines are on the way. I think we all need a little hope. “
Professor McConkey said he expected three to five vaccine options to be available in the state within four to six months, adding that he hoped to get more “nuanced details on the specifics” of the different vaccines.
Some of the vaccines that will be available in the coming weeks may work better for children under the age of two, while others may work better for the young or 90s, he said.
Other vaccines may be stronger to prevent transmission, which will be particularly important for those who work in nursing homes “whose main risk is not only to themselves, but to transfer the virus as a vector to the people they care for.”
Europe began its cross-border vaccination program on Sunday after the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine were delivered to EU member states. Countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Spain plan to start mass vaccinations, starting with healthcare workers on Sunday.
The next vaccine scheduled for EU approval is the Moderna vaccine, whose authorization is expected on January 6. After that, the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, which is considerably easier to administer as it does not require very cold storage as is the case with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna injections, is expected to get EU approval early. from January.
The National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) registered 1,296 new cases of Covid-19 on December 26, the most cases reported in a single day since the pandemic began. Before this week, the daily figure had not exceeded 1,000 since October 25.
Some six coronavirus-related deaths were also reported on St. Stephen’s Day, bringing the total number of deaths as a result of the pandemic to 2,200.
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