Covid-19 vaccine: 'Several months' before normality resumes, health minister warns

If the European Medicines Agency (EMA) signs off on the vaccine by the end of the month, it could be distributed as early as mid-January here. File Picture: PA

The health minister says despite the imminent roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine in Ireland, normal life will not resume immediately.

If the European Medicines Agency (EMA) signs off on the vaccine by the end of the month, it could be distributed as early as mid-January here. 

An expert report is due to be handed over to government tomorrow on how the mass-immunisation should be carried out.

"It's actually a question that I have been discussing at length with the public health officials in the department because it's the question everybody has: 'When can we put this god awful disease behind us and get back to living normal lives?'

It won't be in January. It will take several months now.

"We have an expert group called the National Immunisation Advisory Committee, and that's the group that advises government on the flu vaccine, the HPV vaccine and they are our experts on the best way to do this.

"Their two objectives were: how do we do the prioritisation to save as many lives as possible, and to reduce serious illness or other layers as it were starting at the top with those over the age of 65.

"What they were looking at was saying, essentially, who is the highest risk to the virus? Obviously we know there's people over 65 and nursing homes and other long term care facilities, who tragically in the first wave in more than one in every two Covid deaths came from that group so obviously that's a really important group."

Mr Donnelly added that Ireland will begin rolling out the Pfizer vaccine within a number of days if the vaccine is approved on December 29.

Approaching Christmas, people have been warned to restrict their movements if returning from other countries.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly: "It's actually a question that I have been discussing at length with the public health officials in the department because it's the question everybody has: 'When can we put this god awful disease behind us and get back to living normal lives?'. Picture: Brian Lawless

"One of the big potential vectors for the disease in the holiday period, obviously, is people returning to Ireland I did it for many years myself," he said.

"I lived in London for many years and we came home every Christmas. It was an important time and you know we saw the family and friends.

"What the government is saying, and I think much more importantly what the public health experts are saying, is if you need to come home for Christmas, there are very important restrictions in place. 

"So if you're coming from almost anywhere, you have to go to wherever it is you're going to your friend's house your family house, whatever it is, and you've got to restrict your movements for two full weeks. The one exception to that is after five days, you get a PCR test, and you get a negative result, then you can go about your business.

"We have modelling from Nphet that says the reproductive number goes much above about 1.2, then we're back into some very serious exponential growth, which is something that nobody wants, because it puts the hospitals at risk, it puts lives at risk, it puts the nursing homes at risk," he said.