High-risk children aged 5-11 can register for Covid vaccine from today

The online booking portal opens on the HSE website for children aged five to 11 who are vulnerable to the virus or who live with someone at higher risk.

The first primary school children in Ireland can get appointments for Covid-19 vaccines from today as a new online system opens for 5- to 11-year-olds in high-risk categories.

The start of the vaccination process for young children was heralded as the country’s testing system creaked under the strain of exceptionally high demand yesterday amid record positivity rates for the virus.

The online booking portal opens on the HSE website for children aged from 5 to 11 who are vulnerable to the virus or who live with someone at higher risk. Appointments will be available from January 3 at vaccine centres.

The booking system will then become available to all children aged 5 to 11 with appointments from Jan 10, for a reduced version of the Pfizer vaccine.

Lucy Jessop, director of public health at the National Immunisation Office, said this next step in the vaccination rollout offers an added layer of protection to the population.

“Clinical trials showed that this vaccine was highly effective at preventing Covid-19 in children,” Dr Jessop said.

Health officials expect large Covid-19 case numbers over the coming days. Almost half of all people tested for the virus returned positive results, according to the most recent figures, with 87% now infected with the Omicron variant.

The Department of Health yesterday confirmed an additional 6,735 cases, with the overall positivity rate, among all swabs taken, at nearly 50% — almost double the 25.27% recorded during the worst days of the deadliest wave of Covid-19 last January.

Such is the demand for PCR testing, centres across the country were unable to offer appointments through the self-referral system yesterday.

High demand led to a private testing company drafting in extra staff to one of its mass testing sites in Cork City after it was swamped with people looking to be swabbed.

There were complaints about long queues outside and poor management of queues inside the RocDoc facility at the Cork Airport Business Park.

People who booked and paid for a PCR test privately through the RocDoc system were seen quickly and close to their appointment time.

But those who had booked a ‘free’ test at the facility through the HSE’s booking system had to queue outdoors for up to two hours. Some left without being tested.

In a statement, RocDoc said: “There has been a huge demand for testing across our seven facilities in the last few days due to the spread of the Omicron variant and international travel in the Christmas period. In some cases, queues were formed by people arriving early or without a booking.

“Our staff have been working hard to cater for the extra demand and we are bringing in additional staff to assist.”

The high cases numbers and demand have led to warnings that the health service will not see the full impact for two weeks.

Infectious diseases expert Sam McConkey said he believes Denmark is a few weeks ahead of Ireland in the Omicron outbreak and that he expects the number of cases to double what they are now and then level off.

Prof McConkey said the illness caused by Omicron may be less severe, but the sheer level of infection makes it dangerous.

We’re still going to see a lot of admissions because there’s going to be so many infections.

“Denmark seems to have levelled off. They’ve reached a number of cases, about double what we’re at, and then it seems to have levelled off.”

The argument that Omicron should be let run its course is not valid, he said, because if the widespread transmission was delayed by a week or two, it would mean less pressure on the health service and more time for the expansion of the vaccination and booster programme.