‘Severe fall’ of cases in hospital staff and residences ‘must be attributed to the vaccine’

The HSE has said that Ireland may be beginning to see a reduction in infection rates among hospital staff and those receiving care due to vaccines.

Speaking at a briefing this afternoon, HSE Clinical Director Dr. Colm Henry said that there has been a “very severe drop” in infection rates and that it is “very difficult” to attribute that to the drop in infection alone. community spread.

Henry said that the vaccination of health personnel began on December 29 and that there has been a fairly severe drop in Covid-19 acquired at the hospital since that time.

He noted that this “vaccine effect” has been observed in other countries and is perhaps now visible as in Ireland in a “real world” setting.

“Perhaps these graphs are more illustrative of a potential effect of the vaccine in evidence that we are seeing in other countries that have vaccinated a greater proportion of their populations,” he said.

Henry said that at the peak several weeks ago there were more than 1,000 hospital employees infected in any given week, but that in the last two weeks it dropped to 95 and then 50.

“That is a very severe drop and it is very difficult to attribute that just to the decrease in community transmission, the most likely explanation is that we are now seeing an early effect of the vaccine,” he said.

Henry said a similar drop has been seen in care settings, where 482 cases were confirmed in the week through Feb.14 and only 91 the following week.

He said it was “a very strong fall” and “must be attributed to the vaccine.”

From the first data we are getting, the collapse in the number of laboratory-confirmed cases is really welcome. We have to think that even speaking as dispassionately as we have to do in these circumstances, I think it should be attributed to the vaccine rather than community transmission alone.

When asked if this would mean that restrictions on visitors to nursing homes could be eased, Henry said this is “first on our agenda” when restrictions begin to ease.

The timing of this is important, what we want to do is restore some kind of visit in a safe and incremental way, to bring some relief to residents, but not in a way that jeopardizes the vaccination program or endangers the residents. .

Source: HSE

Henry said he also pointed to a number of particular studies in various parts of the world that have shown that there has been a reduction in the reduction of hospitalizations among vaccinated people of between 85% and 95%.

“So what we’re looking at here is really positive real-world evidence of the impact of the vaccine on all age groups,” he said.

As of Monday, the HSE registered a total of 226,234 first doses of vaccine administered and 133,325 second doses.

Last week, 78,479 doses were administered, of which 14,640 were to the subcohort older than 85 years.