Ireland now has more people to distribute vaccines than it does vaccine doses itself.
That is according to Professor Brian MacCraith, chair of the High-Level Task Force on COVID‐19 Vaccination.
It comes as both the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are to be made available for all adults, regardless of age.
NIAC made the recommendation to Government on Monday night.
Young people will get a choice of whether to take one of the two vaccines or opt for an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna) instead - all subject to supply.
The two jabs had previously only been given to those over-50, amid the concerns over very rare cases of blood clotting.
Prof MacCraith told The Hard Shoulder: "We have now, despite all the predications and gloom out of this, we have more vaccinators than we have vaccines to go out.
"So we are all the time trying to get more and more vaccines into the system and get them out as efficiently as possible."
Prof MacCraith says the latest vaccine figures mean almost 45% of the adult population is now fully vaccinated.
"The figures for this week are very significant... we cross four million vaccine doses administered this week.
"Four million and 45 thousand as of last night - by this evening we will have hit, or very close to, 2.5 million dose ones - that's 66%.
"And over 1.6 million dose twos - so over 43% of the adult population is now fully vaccinated."
On the recommendation for AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson to be made available to all adults, Prof McCraith says this means vaccines will be used which otherwise might not have been.
"Once we complete - and it'll happen before the 19th of July - the 60 to 69s and the AstraZeneca dose twos for those, if this recommdation hadn't come in overnight we would not longer be using anymore AstraZeneca.
"And there's close to two million doses of AstraZeneca due to arrive in quarter three in Ireland.
"We would no longer be using Janssen, where we'll have close to a million Janssen doses arriving in the country in quarter three.
"We could not have used them.
"Ireland, in planning for all of this, the Government has ordered through Europe close to 18 million doses anyway.
"And thank goodness they did that and covered all the basis of possibility.
"Thankfully now there are new options, and really it's too early to say what the direct implications will be in terms of numbers - but that's a positive development overnight".
Prof MacCraith adds that everything working together will keep the vaccine programme going.
"We've now administered over 1.6 millions vaccines through the vaccination centres, the GPs have administered close to 1.5 million vaccines as well.
"But the vaccination centres and the GPs, and now joined thankfully by the community pharmacists, that's the engine of all of this.
"That's what's going to drive this forward".
