Gift of the jab on the way for the 12-15 age cohort
VACCINATION registration begins tomorrow for people aged 12 to 15 – and some in that age group are expected to be vaccinated this weekend.
The rollout comes as the Department of Health reported 1,508 new cases of Covid-19 yesterday. There were 206 Covid patients in hospital, down 11 from Monday, of whom 33 were in the ICU.
Yesterday, the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU) announced that the number of pharmacies administering the Pfizer vaccine will increase to 700. Chemists have so far administered close to 200,000 Covid-19 jabs, mostly the one-shot Janssen (or Johnson & Johnson) vaccine, since they were brought into the rollout in June.
Some 320 pharmacies had already been administering Pfizer vaccines and almost 1,000 had also been offering the Janssen vaccine. More than 700 had originally indicated their availability to administer the Pfizer vaccine, and from this week on, these will now receive stock to begin vaccinations, according to the IPU.
Jabs for 12-to-15-year-olds will primarily take place in vaccination centres, but pharmacies will help. Parents and guardians must first give their consent for this age cohort to receive the jabs.
IPU secretary general Darragh O’Loughlin said yesterday: ‘Pharmacies are now at the vanguard of the vaccination programme.’
He said the HSE is giving guidance to pharmacies on parental consent. ‘Over half of the Irish population lives within one kilometre of a pharmacy, and 85% cent live within 5km. This enhanced local availability of the Pfizer vaccine will provide a further major incentive for people to be vaccinated and this in turn will help Ireland turn the corner in the fight against Covid-19,’ he said.
As of Sunday, there have been more than 6.1million doses of vaccine administered. This includes over 3.2million first doses, 2.69million second doses and 222,962 single-shot doses.
Meanwhile, the Health Information and Quality Authority yesterday released a report stating that of the ten hospitals inspected last year, six were found to have ‘inadequate’ occupational health service resources to meet additional needs caused by the pandemic.
‘As a consequence, hospitals had to add their own resources to supplement occupational health resources,’ said the report.
Opportunities for improvement were identified across six hospitals in relation to risk management processes. Hiqa found that while the hospital system adapted quickly to cope with the pandemic, reoccurring underlying issues of concern relating to noncompliance with national standards were evident.
The watchdog’s director of regulation, Mary Dunnion, said that hospitals’ efforts ‘were made more difficult due to underlying historic problems with infrastructure, limited bed capacity and unequal or limited access to specialist workforce input and advice – problems that Hiqa’s prior monitoring work against national standards has consistently highlighted’.
Speaking about the report, Professor Rob Landers, vice-president of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, said: ‘Our hospitals face a near-insurmountable challenge if urgent action is not taken now to address these issues.’