HSE plans to vaccinate 1 million people per month from April

The rate of Covid-19 infections among healthcare workers is falling steeply, but it is too soon to attribute the improvement to a vaccine effect, health officials have said.

While the proportion of infections among healthcare workers has halved in recent weeks, HSE chief executive Paul Reid said it is too early to draw conclusions about the impact of the vaccination programme.

Israel and the UK, whose vaccination rollouts are most advanced internationally, have seen infections plummet among vaccinated groups. HSE chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry said both countries were able to track the impact on age groups and cities where immunisation started first, but “we can’t do that yet”.

Mr Reid said he appreciated public frustration over the speed of vaccine rollout but said this was constrained by supply. The HSE is administering almost 95 per cent of any supplies it gets, he said.

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Mr Reid said the HSE was planned to be able to vaccinate one million people a month from April.

‘On track’

This week’s target to administer 80,000 doses is “fully on track” while next week 110,000 doses will be administered.

Planning was based on the working assumption that 65 to 69 year olds will be administered the AstraZeneca vaccine, Dr Henry said, though this will be determined by Government, based on recommendations from the National Immunisation Advisory Committee.

Some 200 doses each are being delivered to Inishmor and Arranmore islands in the coming days, Mr Reid said.

North Dublin general practitioner Dr Ray Walley said doctors were seeing patients who were symptomatic “second time around” and others who had “dropped their guard” after receiving a first dose of vaccine.

Plans are being drawn up to administer vaccines to house-bound patients in the priority groups, Mr Reid said.

GPs have identified patients who require home vaccination or transport, and the Defence Forces, local authorities and ambulance staff will also be involved.

The level of infection in the community remains too high to allow for a resumption of non-Covid health services, Mr Reid told the weekly HSE briefing on Thursday. “We have a template but we’re not there yet.”

Slower exit

Mr Reid said overall trends were still going in the right direction, though the pace of exiting the third surge was a lot slower than the speed of entry had been.

Exiting the surge “will be longer and stickier and not at the the pace we’d like,” he warned.

Mr Reid described the situation as “volatile” and warned “this could quickly turn again”.

Patients tended to be sicker when presenting to hospital and required longer stays in hospital and intensive care (ICU), according to Mr Reid, who said this showed the impact of the more transmissible B117 variant first identified in the UK.

There has been a “marked and significant” increase in referrals for children’s eating disorders in the third wave of the pandemic, officials said.

In one service, the number of referrals has doubled in recent weeks, according to HSE chief operations officer Anne O’Connor.

While teachers were successfully teaching and promoting physical exercise through distance education, it was harder for them to ensure mental health interventions when they were not “setting eyes” on students.

Hospital patients

There are 771 Covid-19 patients in hospital with numbers falling 25 per cent last week. This includes 148 in ICU, where numbers dropped 11 per cent.

About 30 per cent of nursing homes are still experiencing outbreaks, but the positivity rate in serial testing has fallen from 2 per cent last month to 0.6 per cent.

Some 2,500 health staff are off work due to infection or being a contact, down from 6,500 at the peak of the third wave.

Overall test positivity is 5.4 per cent, still falling but more slowly than in recent weeks.

Mr Reid drew attention to positivity rates of 25 per cent among contacts and 33 per cent in households, compared to about 10 per cent last year. This is being linked to the dominance of the B117 variant.

Last week, 68 per cent of positive cases were among contacts.

The number of code-red nursing home outbreaks stands at 25, down from 33 last week. One in three homes has an outbreak, but this figure is expected to fall.

Proportionately more patients are now in big hospitals in the east of the country, many of them transferred from smaller units, Ms O’Connor said.