COVID-19: Vaccine and testing procedures Megathread Part 3 - Read OP

iamwhoiam wrote: »

If that is the case then the 60-69 group will be even longer waiting . They were already moved down from 5 to 6 .

Water John wrote: »

I think 65-69 may largely be done in the vaccination centres.

Deleted User wrote: »

Asthma? Yeah that's fair enough. Anyone on most immune suppression therapy probably only deal with consultants/hospitals regularly though, things like arthritis, crohns. Many of the drugs used for these people can't even be prescribed by a GP.

Daniel2021 wrote: »

How does those who are obese with bmi greater than 40 work? A relative is in that category and would just go to the GP twice a year (if no other issues) for prescriptions to be renewed. Should they ring their GP?

Charles Babbage wrote: »

Tomorrow's Times of London (Oirish edition) says that London will send vaccines in August.
That should be really helpful, given that there will be loads of vaccine then.

Van.Bosch wrote: »

Paul Cullen at the Irish times today questioning the huge amount of people vaccinated in cohort 1 & 2 compared with the known amounts in each. Questions people here have asked for a while.

Cohort 2 has seen 228,943 people get vaccines yet the HSE only employ 80,000 people work for them in this category. Obviously there are those outside the HSE on the front line but 3 times the amount seems high.

Charles Babbage wrote: »

Tomorrow's Times of London (Oirish edition) says that London will send vaccines in August.
That should be really helpful, given that there will be loads of vaccine then.

A cabinet source said: “Everyone can see the logic of it. It’s good politics, while at the same time solving a genuine public health concern in Northern Ireland.

“It is a balancing act, making sure that we have enough vaccines to give the UK’s adult population the second dose. Easter will be when we might be able to start offering vaccines to Ireland.”

Britain is prepared to give millions of vaccines to Ireland once all adults in the UK have been offered their first jabs.

The UK government yesterday announced that 30 million people had received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, representing 57 per cent of all adults. Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, has said that all adults in the UK will be offered their first dose of a vaccine by the end of July.

Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, has held broad discussions with Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, about the plans.

It is the intention of the Irish government that 80 per cent of all adults will have received one dose of the vaccine by the end of June.

The Irish government earlier yesterday played down any prospect of an imminent delivery of excess Covid-19 vaccines from the UK. A spokesman told The Times: “We are not aware of any specific plans to share vaccines with Ireland at this stage.”

Simon Coveney, the foreign affairs minister, told RTÉ Radio 1’s This Week show: “There isn’t an offer that I’m aware of, or that the government’s aware of, from the UK. Of course, if there was we’d be very interested in talking to the British government about that.”

The comments came in response to The Sunday Times reporting that UK ministers were working on plans to share 3.7 million doses with the Irish Republic.

Arlene Foster, Northern Ireland’s first minister, has insisted that the proposal is a “runner” and has pledged to continue to lobby Johnson to prioritise Ireland when it comes to distributing spare vaccines.

Ireland has now administered more than 800,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines.

The UK announcement came as pharmacists in Ireland said they were “still in the dark” about when they could begin administering vaccines.

There are more than 1,800 pharmacists in the country and they will play a key role in the government’s plans to administer one million vaccines per month from April.

Darragh O’Loughlin, secretary general of the Irish Pharmacy Union, said: “Pharmacists are increasingly frustrated at the complete lack of clarity on when they can begin vaccinating their patients and the broader public.”

He said pharmacists still had “no information” on when they would begin vaccinating.

O’Loughlin added: “The Irish Pharmacy Union is concerned that any further delay in rolling out the service will lead to a failure to meet our vaccination targets. We are urgently calling on the Minister for Health and the HSE to clarify when pharmacists can begin vaccinating.”

He also said there was a “significant disparity” in the vaccination of pharmacy staff from region to region and called for this situation to be addressed immediately.

“While a significant number of pharmacy staff, as essential frontline workers, have thankfully now been vaccinated, for some reason there are areas of the country where there has been little, if any, movement on vaccination of this key cohort,” he added.

He said if there was not “rapid progress” to address this matter, there could be a “serious knock-on impact” on the rollout of vaccinations in those areas.

Public health officials and the government will meet today to decide what, if any, restrictions to ease before April 5 when the current restrictions are due to end.

Speaking yesterday, Catherine Martin, deputy leader of the Green Party and a member of cabinet, said the government “expects” to be in a position to extend the current 5km travel limit and easing some outdoor restrictions to allow small groups of people to meet up outdoors.

Coveney said: “I would expect, but I can’t be sure, that we would be looking at the 5km restriction, that we’d be looking at outdoor activity, that we will certainly want to facilitate completing the full return to school for children after April 5.”

Deleted User wrote: »

I was looking at the vaccine figures there and can't for the life of me figure out how we can get to having offered at least a single dose to 80% of adults by end of June.

We seem to be scheduled for circa 3m doses delivered in the next three months, of that, 1.75m to 2m will be first or single dose, 1m to 1.25m of it will be required for second dose. Add that to our current single dose figure and that would mean at best 2.55m people will have been given at least a single dose by the end of June (and we'll have about 1.5m fully dosed) that's somewhere around 63% of our adult population (still a good figure but someway short of where I'd hoped we'd be).