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Higher Education Minister Simon Harris has said that a combined effort by political parties will be needed to back a future Covid-19 vaccine.
I was replying on Twitter to the result of a Mail On Sunday / Ireland Thinks poll showing that 70% of people in Ireland would take that vaccine.
“We will need bipartisan efforts to support vaccination when authorities approve one or more for # Covid19. This is not a party political point,” said Harris, who was Minister of Health at the beginning of the pandemic.
“Good people in every game and we will all need to work together to spread the word. We have done it before on important issues,” he wrote on Twitter.
The planning and preparation of a Covid-19 vaccine and how an immunization program would work in Ireland have been going on for months.
Teams from the Department of Health and HSE have been working on this, and a new high-level government task force has also been created.
The task force had its first meeting earlier in the week and has committed to providing a comprehensive national vaccination strategy and implementation plan to the Taoiseach by Friday, December 11.
The indications from Europe are that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are at the top of the queue for approval.
This is understood to inform the work of the task force.
Europe has advanced purchasing agreements with six different manufacturers, from which Ireland will benefit.
But exactly how a new vaccine for Covid-19 is launched in this country could all depend on which of all the contenders is available first.
The professor of experimental immunology at Trinity College Dublin, Kingston Mills said: “People are talking about the choice of vaccines, but we still have no other choice.
“There is no licensed vaccine yet, so it is possible that not all vaccines that we have heard of are licensed.”
Professor Mills said the first thing we need to know is the vaccine trial data. “We haven’t seen it. We don’t know if the regulatory agencies will approve them. That’s the first step.”
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Professor Karina Butler, an infectious disease specialist, is the chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, which advises the Department of Health on vaccines.
He said the group is closely monitoring what is in development and is waiting for a vaccine to be licensed so that it can make recommendations.
The group is already preparing in a sense, Professor Butler said, because it is recognized that there will not be enough vaccines for everyone right away.
Decisions about which groups of people should be prioritized will depend on which vaccine is approved, what is its suitability, and how well it works.
Certain groups will not be vaccinated, at least in the first section.
“There are people in whom this has not yet been tested. There have been no studies in children yet. We have no information about the vaccine in children,” said Professor Butler, adding that because children are in a group of low risk, you will not be in the first leg.
It may be important to vaccinate people who are around pregnant women, rather than giving the vaccine to pregnant women.
Professor Mills said there is “a problem with one of the vaccines” referring to Pfizer BioNTech’s offering, which must be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius.
“I don’t think we’re going to get vaccinated before Christmas, frankly.”
He said: “That requires an ultra-low freezer temperature and sophisticated equipment to store the vaccine, which you can’t have in general medicine surgery, for example.
“I imagine that there would have to be specialized clinics that have these freezing devices, if it is the Pfizer vaccine that is being implemented. That would have to be done in centers dedicated to vaccination.”
The government working group is made up of representatives from different departments, with experience in health, procurement and logistics, and it is understood that it is analyzing each element of the chain from when a vaccine leaves the manufacturer to its implementation.
Professor Butler said that ensuring that the vaccination program is carried out safely will be the “primary concern” and that any risks involved are minimized.
But he said it should be “as easy as possible” because “convenience is an important factor in getting people to take a vaccine when it is offered.”
Professor Butler said: “We want to make sure that anyone who gets vaccinated understands this, knows the risks and benefits to them and their community at large.”
Before final decisions can be made, his group wants to see that vaccines have been “thoroughly reviewed” by the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory bodies.
Whether people in this country will start getting vaccinated before the end of 2020, experts aren’t sure.
“I don’t know,” Professor Butler said, adding that it is his personal opinion that he doubts it will happen before Christmas. She said, “That would be extraordinary.”
While Professor Mills said, “I don’t think we’re going to vaccinate before Christmas, frankly.”
He said we hope to know if a vaccine will be licensed in the coming weeks.
If so, he said that while manufacturers have some limited ready-to-use doses, he believes it will be the new year before we have “a substantial number of vaccine doses available for immunization in Europe and Ireland.”
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