The first clear timeline for the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines to the entire population has been revealed, with the expectation that everyone will be inoculated by September.
Minister of State for Public Procurement, Ossian Smyth, has published a timeline which shows when different sections of society will be vaccinated.
It comes as Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said the approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine at the end of January, would enable Ireland to ramp up the number of vaccinations, from about 50,000 this week to well over 100,000 a week in February.
Under the new timeline, three categories of people will have received their vaccines by the end of March — residents/staff in nursing homes, frontline healthcare workers, over-70s.
- Other healthcare workers.
- Those aged 55 to 69.
- Key workers and those in crowded environments.
- Those with chronic illnesses.
- Education workers
The final three groups — essential workers in less crowded environments, those aged 18-54 and those under 18 or pregnant — will be vaccinated by September.
Mr Smyth said that “procurement and IT are vital to the success of the vaccination programme” and Ireland was in a strong position on this front, with 10 million doses secured.
“In addition to procuring the vaccines themselves, we need millions of surgical steel needles and syringes to administer up to 10m vaccine doses,” he said.
“The rest of the world is trying to procure the same equipment. The chief procurement officer and the chief information officer report to me and have confirmed that Ireland has secured enough supplies to administer 10m vaccine doses.”
Mr Smyth’s timeline for vaccines comes as a further 3,955 cases of Covid-19 and 28 deaths were confirmed, with the head of Nphet’s modelling group warning that it would be some time, possibly until late January, before the number of daily recorded deaths dipped below 25.
Philip Nolan warned that despite people staying at home now, the effects of earlier infections continue in the hospitals.
He said: “We do expect to see the number of deaths per day continue at perhaps 25 per day or higher.”
Some 1,789 patients with Covid-19 are currently being treated in Irish hospitals, with 169 people in ICU beds.
Mr Varadkar sounded a warning that the economy is unlikely to reopen until the number of patients in intensive care units drops below 50.
“What we want is more people being discharged (from hospitals and ICUs) and we’re not there yet,” he told Newstalk.
“But we may get there in the next week or two — it will get worse before then. At least for the next week or two.
“We hope that we’ve turned the corner on case numbers and we would be reasonably confident that we will turn the corner on ICU admissions and hospitalisations.
“I don’t think as a society we want to risk opening up again as quickly as we did in December.
“We did that when we were at 300 cases a day. In my view, any reopening that we do in the next three months will be very gradual.
“As well as that, we would anticipate social distancing and restrictions on gathering will remain in place into summer and the autumn.
“You’d want the numbers in ICUs under 50 and a critical mass of people vaccinated. I don’t like saying it but I anticipate most businesses that are currently closed will be closed until the end of March.”
Meanwhile, some in-person schooling is planned to return on a phased basis from next Thursday for children in special schools and classes.
The Department of Education has targetted a partial return of small groups of primary students with additional needs, who are at risk of disengaging from remote learning, on January 21.
It is the “firm intention” of the Department of Education that all schools will reopen on February 1, subject to Government and public health considerations, a spokesman for the Minister said.
This means Nphet must deem it safe for the secure movement of all staff and students.
