Pace of vaccinations over border a concern: Foster
She wants UK to share jabs with Republic as guard against spread
ARLENE Foster has said the different pace of vaccine programmes on either side of the Irish border must be addressed.
The First Minister said the UK should be prepared to share surplus vaccinations with the Republic if necessary.
“This is something that we’re going to have to discuss, because if you look at our vaccination rate I think (around) 40% of adults in the last week had their first dose, and in the Republic of Ireland it’s somewhere around 6%,” she told Belfast Live.
“If people come up to Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland and they’re not vaccinated then they can carry the Covid with them... that is a concern and it’s something we will take advice on.”
The DUP leader said such a move would also bring greater protection as more people cross the border.
Yesterday Taoiseach Micheal Martin said he had been told by Boris Johnson the UK was not in a position to offer give surplus vaccines.
Mr Martin said the Prime Minister’s first priority was to vaccinate people living in the UK.
“Until then he won’t be in a position to give vaccines to anybody and he has made that point to me, which I thought was fairly obvious at the outset,” he said.
However, the Taoiseach said later the Republic was to receive an extra 46,500 vaccines by the end of the month.
It comes following a deal reached by the European Union to secure an additional 4m doses of the Pfizer jab, which will be supplied across EU countries.
Mrs Foster also said she wished to “move a little faster” in easing lockdown restrictions.
Education Minister Peter Weir has tabled proposals to accelerate the return of children to classes. Those are due to be discussed by his counterparts at Stormont today.
The First Minister said “we are in a very good place” and the vaccine was having an impact.
“There is always a pressure on us when we are in a good place to move faster,” she said.
“I would like to move a little faster but we cannot move so fast that we lose the advantage we have and then we have to take a step backwards.”
She said the pandemic had been hard on people.
“We just want to keep moving forward in the right direction so we can leave this in the rearview mirror,” she added.
She expressed optimism about the summer.
“I think we are in a very good place at the moment,” she said.
“Over the last seven days, the rolling average, we have the lowest death rate across the British Isles per head of population.
“That is a good indicator that the vaccine is having an impact on numbers in hospital, numbers in intensive care and then unfortunately passing away with Covid-19.”
Mr Weir wants all primary school children to be in classes by March 22 and all secondary pupils back at school after the Easter holidays on April 12.
Stormont health advisers have previously stressed the need to stagger the resumption of faceto-face learning to provide sufficient time to analyse the impact of each phase on Covid-19 infection rates in the community.
Thousands of P1-P3 pupils returned to classes for the first time since December on Monday.
Pre-school and nursery children also returned.
Under Stormont’s current phased plan for school return, the next pupils to resume faceto-face learning are secondary school pupils in key exam years, year groups 12-14, on March 22.
Mrs Foster previously said she hoped the Executive can have a “good discussion” today around the wider return to schools.