All residents who want to receive a Covid-19 vaccine in Ireland will be vaccinated by September, a Minister of State has said.
An updated timeline for the roll-out of a vaccine, published by Minister of State for Public Procurement Ossian Smyth, shows the months of 2021 in which it is expected each section of the population will be immunised against the disease.
Ireland has now administered the second most Covid-19 vaccines in the European Union per 100,000 people.
1.57 per cent of the population has been vaccinated — only behind Denmark's 2.23 per cent — according to statistics from Our World in Data.
The latest figures from the HSE show 77,303 people received their first dose as of Sunday.
Updated vaccination rollout schedule -including those aged 55 - 64.
14/Jan/2021 pic.twitter.com/9NrPb1rxpaAdvertisement— Ossian Smyth TD (@smytho) January 14, 2021
According to Mr Smyth’s vaccination timeline, all residents and staff in nursing homes, all frontline healthcare workers and everyone aged over 70 will be vaccinated in Ireland by March.
By June, those in many professions will be vaccinated, including all other healthcare workers, keyworkers, education workers and those working in crowded environments.
Also vaccinated by the end of June will be everyone aged 55 to 69, those aged 18 to 64 with specific chronic illnesses and all those living in care homes.
From July to September, the vaccine will roll-out to the final three segments of the population — essential workers in less crowded environments, everyone aged 18-54, and finally those aged under 18 or those who are pregnant.
This is Ireland’s current rollout speed compared to other countries: pic.twitter.com/DpdREZXxtF 9/n
— Ossian Smyth TD (@smytho) January 14, 2021
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Mr Smyth said the vaccination supply schedule was a “best guess,” as it depended on variables such as when vaccines were approved and how quickly they could be manufactured.
“The HSE has committed to administer every dose of the vaccine at the speed that they receive them,” he said on Twitter.
“Procurement and IT are vital to the success of the vaccination programme. In addition to procuring the vaccines themselves, we need millions of surgical steel needles and syringes to administer up to 10 million vaccine doses.”
Mr Smyth said he had received confirmation that Ireland had secured enough supplies to administer 10 million vaccine doses.
First mass vaccination centre
He added the country’s first mass vaccination centre had opened on Wednesday in Sandyford, however, it was currently only administering vaccines to healthcare staff amid current limited supply.
“This facility will vaccinate 100 people per hour and can be scaled up,” he said.
“We are currently administering 50,000 does per week, matching our starting supply, but that will increase to 285,000 doses per week in the summer as more vaccines are approved and as manufacturing increases.”
Speaking in the Dáil on Thursday, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said the country could ramp up the numbers vaccinated each week to 100,000 from February.
This rate of vaccination could be achieved if a vaccine from AstraZeneca and Oxford University is approved for use in Europe at the end of January, Mr Varadkar said.
“We’re advised the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will meet on the 29th of January, and all things going to plan, will approve the vaccine,” he said.
“That’s very significant because that will allow us to ramp up the number of vaccines we’re doing every week from about 50,000 this week to well over 100,000 in February once that vaccine becomes available.”
Earlier in the week, it emerged that the Government now expects that at least four million people in the State will be vaccinated against Covid-19 by the end of September.
