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The co-leader of the Social Democrats, Róisín Shortall, has called on the Government to re-examine its list of priorities to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, especially when it comes to children under 18 who have serious underlying health problems.
Speaking during Questions from the leaders in the Dáil, MP Shortall said that their lives were often “desperately hard” but that the past year has been “appalling” and spoke about a 17-year-old girl, with underlying health problems, whose older sister had to move out of the family home due to Covid-19 concerns.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said MP Shortall had raised a “valid case that needs to be heard” and that he would raise the issue with the medical director the next time they meet.
He clarified that the sequencing proposals on the launch of vaccines had not been modified by the ministers at the cabinet meeting last Tuesday, but the list could “evolve as new information emerges”, particularly when “new vaccines emerge.”
The Tánaiste said the reason people under 18 with underlying health problems and pregnant women ranked low on the list was because scientists considered the risk to be “very low.”
He also added that not many children or pregnant women participated in the vaccine trials, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t safe for them.
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Regarding the publication of the logistics plan to roll out the vaccines across the country, Varadkar said it should be completed tomorrow, but no decision has been made on whether it will be published then or next Tuesday.
He said that Taoiseach Micheál Martin was currently in Brussels on EU business and that it might not be possible to arrange a cabinet meeting tomorrow.
If that is the case, the matter could be deferred until the regular Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
Fall in the number of patients hospitalized with Covid-19
There has been a further reduction in the number of people hospitalized in Ireland with Covid-19.
At 8 a.m., 203 patients were being treated for the virus.
It compares with a figure of 215 at the same time yesterday morning and 224 at 2 pm yesterday.
It also represents the lowest number of people hospitalized with coronavirus since October 11, when there were 201 patients.
The figures also show that the number of people receiving treatment for Covid-19 in intensive care units has dropped slightly.
At 11 a.m., there were 36 patients in the ICU, up from 37 at night.
The highest level of ICU admissions in a 24-hour period since spring was recorded yesterday, after eight people were admitted for intensive care.
Meanwhile, a professor of Molecular Virology at Queen’s University in Belfast said it is “normal for people to have weird reactions to all vaccines.”
Professor Ultan Power spoke after two NHS workers had allergic reactions after receiving their Covid-19 vaccines with the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine in the UK.
Professor Power described the advice given by the UK authorities, that is, do not give the vaccine to people with a history of allergic reaction, as “relatively normal at this stage”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, he said the experience of the two people in the UK “shows the importance of post-launch monitoring of vaccines to make sure we detect those rare events that could prevent someone from receiving the vaccine.”
He said the experience of people who have had reactions to the vaccine will be studied to determine the component of the vaccine that caused the reaction.
“This would precipitate studies to try to reformulate the vaccine and eliminate part of it that can cause reactions in these individuals,” he said.
The chairman of the epidemiology and public health section of Britain’s Royal Society of Medicine has described the relaxation of Covid-19 measures over Christmas as a “recipe for disaster.”
Dr. Gabriel Scally said there should be no relaxation of the measures during Christmas.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne, she said: “We should keep our guard up. Some of the characteristics of Christmas are not helpful in meeting multigenerational families for a considerable period of time, the weather, the masks are not used and a lot of people entering the country.
“As a public health physician, he is a real recipe for disaster in January and February.”
Additional reports Fergal Bowers and Fergal O’Brien
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