The National Immunisation Advisory Committee has recommended a reduction in the age limits on the AstraZeneca & Johnson and Johnson vaccines.
On The Pat Kenny Show, the HSE Chief Clinical Officer said the limit could now be reduced from 50-years-old to 40.
He said NIAC sent the fresh advice to Government over the weekend.
Both vaccines are currently limited to people over the age of 50.
Vaccines
On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, HSE Chief Clinical Officer Dr Colm Henry said the Government was now considering allowing their use in people over the age of 40.
“We received some information over the weekend indicating the line of thinking of NIAC as it was relayed by the CMO to the Minister for Health,” he said.
“That certainly shows that NIAC certainly considered the administration of these vector vaccines – you know AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson – to 40 to 49-year-olds with some conditions attached to that.”
Rollout
He said the recommended conditions include ensuring that people have full information about any potential risks and that offering the two vaccines to younger people will speed up the rollout.
“We need to go through that information ourselves and think, how do we translate that information and those requirements into a mass vaccination programme where we can do this at pace,” he said.
“Pace is really important now coming out of a week where we delivered well over 230,000 vaccines and into another week where we expected to do more vaccines than that.
“We wanted something not just that is clinically sensible but also something we can implement at pace and with safety to all those target populations.
“So, we have received that information, we have to go through it with our vaccination teams in the centre and decide how can we implement this speedily and how can we implement it among those targets groups in a way that ensures we are giving the vaccine safely with full information to patients.”
On the show last week, Trinity Professor Luke O'Neill said there was "no question" but that the age limit would be reduced - noting that it would be a scandal if unused vaccine was left sitting on the shelves.
The age limits were placed on the two vaccines after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said blood clots with low blood platelets should be included among the “very rare” side effects associated with them
Ireland originally limited the use of AstraZeneca to people over the age of 60 but reduced that to 50 when Johnson & Johnson was approved.
