Covid-19: Cork GAA HQ gears up to become vaccination centre

Spring is in the air at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, but it is vaccines and not championship hurling that is in focus at the Cork GAA headquarters.

The conference centre at Cork's new €96 million stadium will be a Covid-19 vaccination centre for at least six months for the HSE South/South West Hospital Group.

Unlike last year when the HSE set up a testing centre in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, the vaccination centre is located not in the huge cavernous space under the south stand, but in the more luxurious setting of the conference centre on the second floor in the same stand.

Aífe O’Connell, vaccination lead at the centre, said staff will able to inoculate up to 3,000 people a day at its 30 vaccination booths when running at peak capacity on 12-hour shifts from 8am to 8pm each day.

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“We’re starting with 10 to 15 booths tomorrow with one vaccinator per booth, but, as and when vaccines are available, we will scale that up to a maximum of 30 booths and we will have medical and nursing staff monitoring the observation area after people get their vaccines,” she said.

“This week we are focusing on healthcare workers . We want to get all healthcare workers in Cork vaccinated and over the next two days we will be doing between 650 and 700 each day, and they will be coming from a variety of healthcare settings in the greater Cork area.”

Category 4

“Next week, we are supporting the hospitals in vaccinating Category 4 patients – these are people aged between 16 and 69 who are at a high risk . Some of these are being vaccinated within the hospital system this week, but we will be helping out with others next week.”

Ms O'Connell said the health workers will be vaccinated on Thursday and Friday with the AstraZeneca vaccine, but the centre will be equipped to administer whatever vaccine becomes available.

“We will be using AstraZeneca this week and next week, but we will take whatever vaccine is available. But we won’t be running more than one vaccine on any particular day from a safety perspective, because each vaccine has different storage and transfer policies we need to follow.

“Staff here are really excited now that we’re about to start vaccinating . Everyone here has worked so hard to get us to this point and people just want to get doors open and see the benefit of all the hard work and hopefully see the smiles on people’s faces.”