Vaccination centre to open at Páirc Uí Chaoimh this week

Cork GAA stadium is one of 11 major centres pressed into service nationwide as the Covid-19 vaccine rollout ramps up  

Preparatory work going on at Cork's main GAA stadium, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, in advance of the vaccination centre opening there this week. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

A vaccination centre will open at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork this week and operate as one of 11 centres nationally as the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines ramps up.

The GAA stadium will now be used for the rollout of vaccines for the first time this week when the final group of healthcare staff receive their jabs on Thursday and Friday.

The centre will be used to vaccinate people in the first four priority groups and will be used as a mass vaccination clinic further down the line as the vaccination programme scales up.

The entrance being set up for the vaccination centre at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork, where people in the first four priority groups will begin getting inoculated from this week, before being used as a mass vaccination clinic further down the line. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in a range of locations to date, from residential care settings to GP surgeries, to vaccination hubs for healthcare staff and hospitals for individuals considered to be medically vulnerable.

The Páirc Uí Chaoimh vaccination centre will have the capacity to vaccinate as many as 3,000 people per day, seven days per week, when operating fully.

The HSE Regional Vaccination Steering Committee for Cork and Kerry confirmed that the centre will have 30 vaccination booths but that maximum capacity will not be used “until later in the rollout”.

“Depending on vaccine supply and the numbers required to be vaccinated, the centre will have the capability to operate seven days a week, 12 hours a day. It will be some time before it is needed to operate at this level, and again this will be dependent on factors including vaccine supply,” a local HSE spokesperson said.

Final healthcare workers getting jabs this week

The spokesperson said the last tranche of public and private healthcare workers will be vaccinated this week and the centre will also be used to vaccinate those falling into the medically vulnerable category, who will be invited to vaccination.

“On Thursday and Friday, we plan to vaccinate healthcare workers at the Páirc Uí Chaoimh centre. We are close to completing this group in Cork and expect to have almost all frontline healthcare workers in Cork vaccinated by the end of the month,” the spokesperson said.

Major centres around the country

The largest vaccination centre in the country will open at CityWest in Dublin, which will have 60 booths, followed by the Helix Theatre in DCU (48 booths) and Galway Racecourse (43 booths). Seven other regional vaccination centres, including one at City Hall in Cork, will have a capacity of 30-40 booths when they open.

To date, more than 668,000 vaccine doses have been administered, of which 180,000 people have received their full two-dose vaccine.

The Government and HSE, however, have come under fire for delays in the rollout of vaccines.

Criticism of vaccine rollout

Yesterday, Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould questioned why clinics were not operating at weekends, and pointed out that as many vaccine doses were administered on one day in the UK — more than 840,000 doses alone last Saturday — as have been administered in Ireland since the rollout began in January.

“The other weekend, we gave out 300 vaccine doses — they are giving out hundreds of thousands of doses,” the Cork North-Central TD said.

“We had 30,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine last week that we put on hold — why weren’t they given out over the weekend? They haven’t even given a commitment that they will be given out this week,” Mr Gould added.

A spokesperson for HSE national operations said vaccines were being administered as quickly as possible.