Overhaul of vaccine priorities puts some medical conditions higher up list, while healthier 65- to 69-year-olds must wait
PEOPLE whose medical conditions put them at very high Covid risk will now get the vaccine sooner – but some healthcare workers and healthier 65- to 69-year-olds will wait longer.
An overhaul of the priority list announced last night will see certain healthcare workers, thousands of people aged 65-69 and key workers pushed down the queue.
The new priority list for vaccines will also see people aged 16 to 69 with conditions like cancer, chronic kidney disease, diabetes and obesity moved up to be next in line to receive the vaccine next, after the over-70s.
They will replace those healthcare workers who are not in direct patient contact, who were previously due to be next in the queue.
There is also a change in cohort five, which will now be those people aged 65 to 69 whose underlying condition puts them at higher risk of the virus.
Healthier people aged 65-69 have moved down to cohort six, with the remaining healthcare workers.
The new list was approved by the National Immunisation Advisory Committee which has also said that the PfizerBioNtech and Moderna vaccines will only be given to the 16- to 69-year-olds who are at very high or high risk due to pre-existing conditions.
This could lead to delay in vaccinations, but it should not be longer than three weeks.
Commenting on the changes, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said that “those who are moving up the list would suffer the worst outcomes if they were to get the disease”.
Meanwhile, it emerged that the chance of a ‘staycation’ is Ireland this summer hinges on the roll-out of vaccines in the crucial months of April, May and June.
Although the Government has not made any promises about internal summer travel, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said yesterday he expects 82pc of the population will have got a first dose of vaccine by the end of June.
He said he anticipated 44pc to 60pc of the country will be fully vaccinated at that point.
Options
If that happens, it would mean the Government would have more options about allowing holidays in Ireland, although there was no sign Mr Martin was looking that far ahead yesterday.
The Government’s new plan includes 602,082 doses of the yet-to-be licensed Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine in its projections for available jabs for the three months from April to June.
Under the vaccine plan, it expects to have a total of 3.8 million doses of four different vaccines over these three months – a major ramp up on vaccine availability in the first quarter.
It includes just 818,000 Oxford-AstraZeneca doses – half the amount originally expected.
The single jab Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been described a game changer because of the way it will speed up vaccination, with the others needing two doses.
It was submitted for approval to the European Medicines Agency in the middle of this month and could get the green light in March or April.
It comes as a top Irish European Commission official yesterday dampened prospects of holiday travel to Europe this summer.
John Ryan, director of public health in the European Commission’s Directorate General for Health and Food Safety, said: “I am not sure if the summer will involve travelling to the beaches in Greece or Torremolinos, or Turkish resorts.
“I am not sure how we can re-establish leisure travel.
“What we are trying to do is to agree together on the importance of keeping essential travel open. We have seen in the past few days one of our biggest members closing certain frontiers.
“We do not think closing frontiers is the solution,” he told an online event on the EU vaccines strategy.
“We hope to get back to normal as quickly as possible working with all states to make it as quickly and safe as possible.”
The European Commission will publish a tourism plan in the post-Covid period in the coming weeks, Mr Ryan added.
Earlier, he said that parts of competition law are being suspended to allow for drug companies with spare capacity to offer it to vaccine manufacturers to boost supply.
It comes as 45 more Covid-19 related deaths were reported among people aged 55 to 104 yesterday.
The number of daily cases fell to 575, the highest of which were reported in Dublin with 218 newly diagnosed people and 38 in Galway.