'Safety first:' Health chief defends speed of Ireland's vaccine rollout

The first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine arriving in the Republic of Ireland. Picture: Micheál Martin/Twitter

The speed of Ireland's vaccine rollout has been defended by a health chief who also repeated the claim that the country is experiencing the third wave of Covid-19. 

While the first vaccinations are now to be issued tomorrow, a day earlier than planned, Ireland is still lagging behind some other European countries in terms of issuing vaccines to nursing home residents and the broader population.

Dr Colm Henry, HSE chief clinical officer, told RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland that "for a vaccine programme to be successful, it's not a question of speed, it's a question of safety".

This complex process includes registration, obtaining "fully-formed consent", identifying exact numbers in more than 580 nursing home settings, and ensuring that further supplies of the vaccine are coming into the country on time, he explained.

Dr Henry defended Ireland's planned time frame surrounding the rollout of the vaccine, with many European countries starting to issue vaccines to nursing home residents immediately, whereas Ireland is waiting until January 4.

"We want to put safety first and foremost in this vaccination programme," he said.

He said there are no major concerns around allergic reactions to the virus. He said reports of a small number of such incidents in other countries is 'not unusual' but said that issuing vaccinations in acute hospital sites in Cork, Galway and Dublin first would give confidence to those taking part in the programme.

When other vaccines arrive in the country in the coming weeks, availability will be expanded, he added.

Speaking about the increasing levels of the virus in the community, Dr Henry raised a number of concerns about close contacts.

Case numbers are now over 1,000 per day in recent days, with yesterday the exception, though this was the result of reduced testing on Christmas Day, health officials noted yesterday.

1,296 cases were confirmed on St Stephen's Day, the highest amount since the outbreak began.

Yesterday, that number fell to 744 confirmed cases but Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan warned that they believe that “due to the lower volume of tests being carried out over Christmas Day and [St Stephen's Day], we believe there are higher levels of disease circulating in the community”.

Health officials have warned that they expect to see a "large increase in cases reported" in the next few days.

"We are seeing levels, now, which appears to be in a third surge," Dr Henry said.

Last week, Professor Philip Nolan - Chair of the Nphet Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group - said Ireland is "clearly now in a third wave".

He said: "The virus is transmitting very rapidly, faster than we have seen at any point since March".

Dr Henry said that activity "over the Christmas period shows that there is increased demand in testing. Some of the referral through community testing centres, from the out of hours GP service have been very high."

He said that on December 22, there was a record new number of lab tests - almost 23,000 tests in on day "and in terms of contact tracing we've seen a big, big increase - 9,000 per week, upwards of 30,000 per week and 5,000 to 6,000 per day since December 22. 

"All this shows the virus is very active out there in the community and it's replicating - there are multiple outbreaks and we see also the arrival of this new strain from London and the south east of England which is now the dominant strain there."

He appealed, once again, to people to reduce the number of contacts they have.

Dr Henry said that there are no current fears of hospitals becoming overwhelmed due to a sharp decrease in seasonal flu and other viruses, though he noted that the numbers in ICU have increased in recent weeks to over 300, which was also noted as a concern by Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan.