This week’s suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine should not impact on our ability to ease coronavirus restrictions.
Health officials paused the rollout of the jab over the weekend amid reports of blood clotting in four adults who had been vaccinated in Norway.
The decision was taken, “on the precautionary principle” while the European Medicines Agency (EMA) investigates the reports.
AstraZeneca has noted that around 17 million people have already received the jab – with the number of reported blood clots actually lower than would be expected among the general population.
It means that 30,000 AstraZeneca doses will not be administered over the coming days – cutting this week’s vaccination target from 80,000 to 50,000.
On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, the Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said a decision on resuming the rollout will be made this week.
“I would certainly hope that we would have a report from the EMA and a decision here based of that by this week,” he said.
Restrictions
He said the suspension should impact on any plans for an easing of restrictions.
“Certainly, what has happened this week with AstraZeneca shouldn’t really have a bearing on that,” he said.
“There are about 30,000 people that were due to receive their first AstraZeneca dose this week,” he said.
“They are disappointed, there will be a lot of disappointment but they will be rescheduled very, very quickly so it is unlikely that this will have an impact on the overall case numbers in this country.”
Earlier on the show, the HSE CCO Dr Colm Henry said there ”may well be no association “ between the blood clotting reports and AstraZeneca; however, he said the suspension was the “prudent and correct thing to do to.”
Reopening
Minister Donnelly said it is still too early to set a target month for the reopening of the country.
“I think, at this point, we do need to focus on April 5th,” he said. “Then, as the vaccines are rolled out, as they are ramped up, we are looking at an average of about a million vaccines administered a month for April, May and June.
“Obviously, that is going to make a big, big difference and then we can begin having that conversation.
“But, given that it is still quite early March, we just need to focus, unfortunately, on the short term.”
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