Donnelly: Hit to vaccine supply is ‘real setback’

A REDUCTION in the expected delivery of a ‘gamechanging’ Covid vaccine has been described as a ‘real setback’ by Health Minister Stephen Donnelly.

The AstraZeneca vaccine is the ‘backbone’ of the next phase of our vaccine roll-out to be administered by GPs and pharmacists.

The pharmaceutical company warned the

European Commission yesterday that its supplies to Europe will be ‘lower than originally anticipated’.

It has yet to emerge how this will directly affect our supplies as Ireland had an advance purchase agreement of 3.3million doses once the vaccine was granted European

Medicines Agency approval on January 29.

The delivery of AstraZeneca vaccines for the first three months of the year was expected to be 600,000 doses arriving in mid-February which would enable 300,000 people to be vaccinated, as two doses are required.

However, it emerged yesterday that manufacturing problems mean that it will cut its initial supplies to the EU by 60%.

Mr Donnelly tweeted last night: ‘The news from AstraZeneca, which has advised the EU of a reduction in vaccine supply in Feb and

March, is a real setback. The numbers are still tentative and AstraZeneca is due to provide more exact figures at a meeting early next week. Will provide an update as soon as possible.’

Taoiseach Micheál Martin told RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor yesterday he expects ‘robust engagement’ between the European Commission and AstraZeneca in the coming days as this could ‘put us in a problem’ and impact the rollout to the over-70s.

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is seen as a ‘game changer’ for the rollout effort as it is relatively cheap to produce and can be stored at normal fridge temperature, unlike the Pfizer jab.

A spokesman for Mr Donnelly said that while they can’t anticipate future setbacks like this, given the expected volumes of other vaccines to come on stream we can still meet our target of having the adult population vaccinated by September. We will have enough vaccines at that stage for ‘4.3 million people, which exceeds the adult population in the State’.

That means Ireland could just about manage the EU’s target of having 70% of the adult population vaccinated by the summer if Irish figures given by Mr Donnelly are met.

But this still doesn’t mean life can go back to normal, experts say.

Waiting for the vaccine to reopen the country would be a dangerous strategy, according to the Assistant Professor in Biochemistry in the Department of Neurosciences in Trinity College, Dr Tomás Ryan.

He said: ‘Reducing the potential death rate is of little solace because we don’t want to get anywhere near that potential death rate. We want to reduce the actual death rate.

‘What would reduce the actual death rate in Ireland, and which will also reduce restrictions, is the virus numbers reducing, not how quickly we vaccinate vulnerable groups.’