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The director general of the Health Service Executive (HSE), Paul Reid, has said he was “highly encouraged” by the level of registration among those aged 56 to 59 for vaccination against Covid-19, and that he has not felt “a stronger moment of hope and optimism” than he does now.
Mr Reid told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that 34,000 people registered for vaccination on Thursday while 452,000 had registered already through the online portal. People in the 60 to 69 age cohort were also still registering and he encouraged anyone who has not yet done so to come forward.
The revised vaccination plan has been concluded and the HSE is awaiting a response from the Government, he said. The three key principles of the plan were to continue the rollout on the basis of age, use all the vaccines available at any time with no holding any for later and maximise use of available vaccines.
There was strong momentum for the rollout, he added, with 220,000 to 240,000 people expected to be vaccinated this week and a further 250,000 to 270,000 next week. On Thursday of this week, 46,000 people were vaccinated, the highest level in one day to date.
Mr Reid acknowledged that there would be a shortage of 40,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to be delivered next week, but he was hopeful this could be made up in time.
“I’ve certainly never felt a stronger moment of hope and optimism than we do feel now,” he said. “We all really want to see this home now. We still have a lot of the [vaccine] programme to get through.”
The HSE had been working seven days a week since January of 2020 and he had never felt better optimism, which was directly related to the vaccine roll out, Mr Reid said. However, he added, there should be caution as still only one in three people had received their first vaccine and one in eight had their second dose. “We still have a lot to get through, we don’t want to slip back.”
When asked about antigen test kits going on sale in Lidl from Friday, Mr Reid said that antigen testing had a role to play, especially in certain sectors, but that PCR testing remained the gold standard as there were issues with the accuracy of antigen testing for those who were asymptomatic or not experienced with testing.
Mr Reid said he expected frontline staff to take the vaccine, they were taking a risk if they did not and decisions would have to be taken on a local basis, but it was not appropriate for someone who had not been vaccinated to be dealing with people face-to-face.
On the issue of the measurement of Covid-related deaths in Ireland which is alleged to have been under-reported by an international study, Mr Reid said that he believed Ireland had taken the right approach, but he was certain that correlation studies would be completed shortly. An analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in the United States showed that Covid-19 has caused more than 7,000 deaths in Ireland – some 2,000 more than the officially quoted figure.