VACCINE CHIEFS: FIRST COVID JABS WITHIN 11 DAYS
Some festive cheer as a new year lockdown looms
THE chair of Ireland’s Covid Vaccination Task Force has said inoculations against the killer disease will start before the end of the year, ‘all going well’.
Professor Brian MacCraith said he is confident ‘we should be ready’ to start administering the first 5,000 doses provided approval is given by the European Medicines Agency and certain safety guidelines are met.
EMA approval may come as early as tomorrow. ‘All going well in terms of approval from the EMA and contingent on
the arrival of vaccines – but we’re very hopeful that will happen soon,’ Prof. MacCraith said.
‘Every effort will be made to commence the programme this side of New Year’s Day. We can’t at this stage be more specific than that. Everything will be driven by safety matters and following what is laid out in the documentation.
‘Only if we can adhere to all of the safety guidelines that are clearly laid out in the document that the Minister for Health launched earlier this week from the Taskforce.’
Separately, Prof. MacCraith’s optimism was echoed by the chair of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC), Dr Karina Butler.
It is understood that, along with EMA approval, the major factors that will allow the vaccine to be rolled out in Ireland by the end of the year include the presence of trained staff, who are in place and being trained to give the jab, and an IT system to track who has been vaccinated.
Vulnerable groups and frontline healthcare workers are expected to be prioritised for the jab. It is also understood that residents of longterm facilities could all be vaccinated by as early as February.
Regulators at the European Medicines Agency are meeting tomorrow to decide whether to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech jab.
If they give it the go-ahead, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said that vaccinations will begin across the continent next Sunday. But the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has said it will delay a decision if its members aren’t satisfied with the vaccine’s quality, safety and efficacy.
While the EU is determined that vaccinations will begin simultaneously in all member states, Germany has been pressing to begin inoculations as its infection rate spirals.
Economist Pro-
fessor Paul Welfens called for the current vaccine distribution plans to be scrapped and for a ‘turbo plan’ to be introduced where the whole population there could be vaccinated in 90 days.
Dr Butler of NIAC said there was no reason to believe the EMA would stop a roll-out before New Year.
‘A huge amount of work has been going on behind the scenes in the HSE and the National Immunisation Office,’ Dr Butler told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
‘The vaccinators are receiving training, the freezers to hold the vaccines are in place and ready to go. What we’re waiting for is the authorisation from the EMA and they are due to meet on Monday.
‘We know they had requested information to ensure everything was OK with the vaccine and if there were any delays in that, it could still be the 29th before we receive authorisation.
‘We have no reason to believe they won’t approve it. We have the FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] documents on it, and the roll-out in the UK has commenced. The EMA would be aware if anything has occurred since the rollout of the vaccine in the
UK and the US.’
During the launch of the Covid-19 vaccine strategy and implementation plan this week, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly changed his tune from previous warnings that it would be the new year before jabs started in the Republic.
He too pointed to potential confirmation tomorrow from the EMA, meaning an early roll-out of the vaccine before year-end.
But the positive comments from our top two vaccine chiefs are the strongest indication that the State may have reached the beginning of the end of the fight against Covid.
The Government this week signed off on a plan to spend €100m giving out 14 million doses of at least five different types of Covid-19 vaccine, including two million Pfizer jabs.
Earlier this week, Prof. MacCraith said we could receive 5,000 vaccines before the year’s end and that it could be possible to have resi
‘Vaccinators are receiving training’
dents in nursing homes and staff vaccinated by mid-February, but this is not guaranteed as delivery has not been finalised.
A highly placed source told the MoS that while it is still very difficult to put a timeline on when each stage of the vaccine roll-out will be complete, it will very much depend on the approval of vaccines and the confirmed delivery of vaccines.
However, they said: ‘It is likely that we will have mass vaccination centres some time in quarter two. After that, there are so many issues that need to be clarified in terms of the number of vaccines to be approved, the production levels of companies and the delivery level standing up.’
It’s understood officials are resistant to making exact predictions as there are too many variables still at play to predict a date for the reopening of the country.
A recruitment drive to staff vaccine administration locations will be necessary but not in the initial phases of rolling out the vaccine. The highly placed source said the initial supply of vaccines will be small, therefore the vaccination workforce that we have identified will be appropriate but once it starts scaling up, of course expansion of the workforce will be important. Engagement with GPs and pharmacies on the vaccine has already started.
In terms of when the economy could reopen fully, Dr Butler said it will still come down to case numbers and how the virus is circulating in the community.
‘The data [on vaccines that are available] is really very robust and very good in terms of their protective efficacy for these,’ she said. ‘The first two that are coming along – the mRNA vaccine and the omnivirus vaccine – are around 90-95% protective.
‘But, even at that level, it means there are 5% or maybe 10% of people who take the vaccine who won’t get that protective effect. So, as long as there’s a lot of virus in the community, we still have to do everything to protect those who are unprotected.
‘So we’re not going to be dispensing with the masks, and the social
distancing immediately. We saw over the summer, if we get the numbers down to a very low level which we did with the first lockdown, life
‘The confidence of the public has flicked off’
can get back to almost normal.’
As highlighted in last week’s MoS, there is concern around how data will be stored on those who take the vaccine. Chief executive of Home and Community Care Ireland Joseph Musgrave said the State does not have a good track record when it comes to online systems.
Earlier this week, IBM and Salesforce were selected to coordinate the IT system which will keep track of Ireland’s vaccination programme and engagement with the data commissioner began last week.
Meanwhile, Dr Butler said she wasn’t aware of how the IT system will record people who have been vaccinated, or whether it would use PPS numbers.
However, she said it would be ‘critical’ in ensuring that follow up with patients is possible, adding that ‘a unique patient number will be needed in that system but all of that is in train’.
She also said it was unlikely that people would be able to choose which of the several vaccines due to be rolled out they receive.
‘I don’t think that will be possible and at the moment we will only have one vaccine coming into the country. And the second one that will come in after that is almost identical to it,’ she said. ‘So I would advise
anyone who should be getting the vaccine now not to hold off.’
Meanwhile, despite the increasing likelihood of earlier than expected mass-vaccinations, concern is growing at the top echelons of Government that it has ‘lost the dressing room’ when it comes to public confidence in its strategy.
One senior source warned: ‘There is a bit of an Irish Water vibe surrounding it all. The confidence of the public has flicked off like a light switch.’
One minister warned: ‘It is very much an Irish revolt. Public acqui
escence and private dissent. The narrative has become unspooled.’
They are, one minister said: ‘In fairness dealing with a scenario where we are in a very bad place, the numbers are very bad, and they are very bad in advance of when they should be very bad.’
We are, one minister warned: ‘At a very delicate tipping point both in terms of public consent and in terms of our capacity to control any outbreak. Our hospitals are much less prepared today than they were in March.’