Cabinet to back purchase of nearly 1m extra doses of Moderna vaccine

The Cabinet is expected on Tuesday to approve the purchase of almost one million extra doses of Covid-19 vaccine.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly opted into the purchase of an additional 875,000 Moderna vaccines at the weekend, bringing Ireland’s total order from the US drug firm to 1.65 million.

It is hoped up to one million of the doses can be delivered to Ireland by July, thereby allowing for a significant ramping up of the overall vaccine rollout in the first half of the year.

After weeks of setbacks around vaccine supply, sparked by manufacturing issues and a bitter row between the European Commission and AstraZeneca over supplies to the EU, Irish officials overseeing the rollout are growing more confident about the prospects of an early ramping up of the programme.

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The National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac) yesterday wrote to Mr Donnelly in relation to the authorisation of the AstraZeneca vaccine for over-65s along with the rest of the adult population.

Expected authorisation

The expected authorisation for this vaccine means the administration of vaccine to older people is likely to start in the next 10 days.

Prof Karina Butler, chair of Niac, said: “We have sent our advice and it is being considered.”

With the order of additional supplies of the Moderna vaccine, Ireland has in total purchased 16 million vaccine doses from all suppliers, enough to vaccinate 9.1 million people, though some of the vaccines have yet to be authorised for use in the EU.

So far, 207,330 vaccines have been delivered to Ireland, of which 199,800 have been administered, latest figures show.

Public health officials last night expressed concern about a “plateauing” of daily virus case numbers. Some of the slowing decline is due to the resumption of testing of contacts from last Friday, but officials said workplace outbreaks and the new variant first identified in the UK may also be to blame.

‘Dropping their guard’

Workplaces were emerging as settings where people were dropping their guard”, according to National Public Health Emergency Team official Dr Philip Nolan, and due to the spread of the UK variant this was more likely to “have consequences”.

Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan advised people against planning foreign holidays this summer, saying Nphet’s recommendation against non-essential travel was “for the foreseeable future”.

“I don’t think we’re heading for a summer where millions of people from this part of the word can head to the beaches, other than the beaches in their own localities,” he said.

Ten further deaths of Covid-19 patients were reported along with 1,062 new cases.