Sir, – Why is the HSE persisting with organising booster shots by specific age cohorts when the actual constraint is the time from when a patient had his/her primary vaccination. Age cohorts were (just about) okay in the spring/summer when there was a shortage of vaccines but we have been told for some time now that the country has sufficient stock in place to fully roll out this programme.
We are no longer in this position and surely the logical thing to do now is permit open access to boosters for people who are due one depending on the vaccine they first received.
Why complicate matters or is the usual HSE over-managed under-led processes at work?
Allow eligible people to book their own appointments or have walk-in clinics as most participating GPs are doing in their practices.
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We are at war with this virus. War doesn’t stop for Christmas. Speed trumps perfection etc.
– Yours, etc,
Dr SHANE CORR
Carrickmacross
Co Monaghan.
Sir, – Your front-page article (December 9th) cites “a lag in reporting of booster doses being given through GPs and pharmacies” as part of the reason for the large number of booster no-shows. I’m not sure this holds water as, certainly for GPs, our practice software links immediately with HSE systems notifying delivery of the vaccine with every return including the patient’s PPS number. I don’t think this is truly the issue.
On the other hand, the rush by the Government to offer vaccination to huge cohort after huge cohort in a higgledy-piggledy way with full page ads in papers such as yours and massive text-messaging campaigns to all groups while knowing that the infrastructure cannot cope in a timely manner is, in my opinion, to blame.
On this premise between now and Christmas, the over-60s will need to be completed, the at-risk groups aged 16-59 vaccinated, all over-50s offered a vaccine, with the five-11 year-olds from January.
Let’s be reasonable about what we can achieve and form orderly queues as we did last year with the most vulnerable being looked after first. We should surely also as a society revisit the discussion about Covid vaccination programmes in developing nations which seems to have disappeared off the agenda altogether in our unseemly rush to look after ourselves first.
– Yours, etc,
Dr MIKE QUIRKE
Gladstone Street Surgery,
Clonmel, Co Tipperary.