Vaccine registration to open for 30-34 years next week

2.4 million people have received their first doses while almost 1.6 million people had their second jab.

The Health Minister has confirmed that those aged 30-34 years will be able to register for their Covid-19 vaccine towards the end of next week.

The HSE has also confirmed 18 to 49-year-olds will have a choice of vaccine.

The official advice is those age groups should be offered an mRNA option but can go for a dose of AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson if they want an earlier vaccination.

This afternoon, Stephen Donnelly said second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for those aged 60-69 will be completed over the coming weeks.

According to Mr Donnelly, there were 351,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine administered last week.

He shared the latest figures as the HSE Covid-19 vaccine dashboard came back online this morning for the first time since the cyberattack in May.

It shows that up to Tuesday June 29, a total of 4.1 million doses have been administered.

Of those 2.4 million are first doses while almost 1.6 million people have received their second jab.

The Government failed to reach its end-of-June vaccination target.

It was aiming for 82% of the adult population to receive their first Covid-19 vaccine dose by yesterday, June 30.

HSE chief executive Paul Reid said yesterday morning only 67% of adults had got their first jab and 44% had got both doses.

Towards the end of May, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said the 82% target would likely be missed due to supply issues.

The Government had initially expected to receive 470,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by the end of June. In May, it was projected that Ireland would receive 235,000 or - in a worst case scenario - 60,000 doses.

Speaking to the Oireachtas health committee last week, Paul Reid said that delivery of the one-dose vaccine was near the worst case estimates with less than 80,000 J&J doses delivered in June.

Mr Varadkar said that should the June target for providing a first dose of vaccine to 82% of the adult population be missed it would "only be by a few weeks".

Just over 72,000 single shot Johnson and Johnson vaccines have been administered.

The majority of people have been administered the Pfizer jab with that vaccine accounting for 2.7m doses.

From today, the HSE is no longer offering vaccine appointments to people who refuse them 3 times.

It says the new policy will help speed up the rollout and reduce the risk of any possible vaccine wastage.

Anyone who wants a further appointment will need to contact HSE-Live and ask to be reinstated.

Consultant in Infectious Diseases, Dr Eoghan de Barra said it is an important step.

"If there are slots going unused and serially unused with people booking and not attending, that will really impact the ability of the campaign to utilise its full capacity," said Dr de Barra.

"You want every slot to be utilised every time. There are still willing people out there."