The Minister for Health has confirmed that his claim everyone in Ireland will be vaccinated by September does not include children.
Speaking the Dáil this morning, Stephen Donnelly said every Irish citizen would be offered the jab within eight months.
He said the timeline was based on the country receiving the supply it expects and noted that Ireland is due to receive 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in before the end of March.
On The Hard Shoulder this evening, he confirmed that the projection involves “every Irish resident” and does not include children.
“It is not about being a citizen obviously, if you are living here you will be offered a vaccine and you will be offered it for free,” he said.
“At the moment the vaccines we have are for adults. Moderna I think is 17 up, Pfizer, I would have to check absolutely, but for the moment it is adult residents.”
He said the plan would see about 3.5 million people vaccinated by September – but warned that the projections are “all super-preliminary.”
“I just want to reiterate, these are timelines, including based on vaccines that not only have not been authorised and for which we have no delivery schedule but for which the companies have not even applied for authorisation,” he said.
Vulnerable
Minister Donnelly said the Government aims to have 700,000 people vaccinated by the end of March - frontline healthcare workers, people in long-term residential care and the over 70s.
He said the target is then to vaccinate 1.8 million people in each of the next two quarters, hitting the 3.5 million mark in September.
He said the programmes is currently on target to vaccinate 140,000 people by this Sunday.
Nursing homes
He confirmed that the target of vaccinating all nursing home staff and residents by the end of the month would not be possible; however, he noted that this was because some residents are too sick for vaccination.
“There are a number of people who because they are already infected with COVID, we weren’t able to vaccinate – that is just a clinical reality,” he said.
“Sure, there are some people with COVID who couldn’t be vaccinated but the target was to obviously vaccinate everybody who could be vaccinated and we are on target for that.
“I think the teams working right across the country deserve huge credit. They have been working so hard to get this done.”
The minister said there are no plans to force healthcare workers to get the vaccine if they don’t want it – and insisted that uptake is currently “very, very high” amongst health staff.
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