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PHARMACISTS WILL START administering Covid-19 vaccines early this month, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said.
Donnelly told the Seanad yesterday evening that pharmacists will adminiters from this week or next.
“Where I think this is particularly important is in some of the areas that are further from the vaccination centres,” he said.
“We’re moving ever closer to meeting our goal of offering vaccinations to everyone in Ireland who wants one,” he added.
The vaccine registration portal will open for people aged 40 to 44 from tomorrow.
Pharmacists are due to get €35 per vaccine dose administered, the same figure as GPS, plus €10 for each patient who’s entered into the system.
Darragh O’Loughlin, Secretary General of the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU), has welcomed the news but said the HSE has yet to confirm the development with the IPU.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, O’Loughlin: “More than 1,000 pharmacies around the country have applied to vaccinate. We’ve been trying to do this for several months now, we’ve been delayed consistently by the HSE, we’re very glad to be getting started now.
“We understand that there will be a small amount of Janssen vaccines made available to pharmacies to vaccinate people aged over 50 who have missed out on or not been able to get to a vaccination centre. Subsequently mRNA vaccines or Pfizer vaccines will be made available, particularly in pharmacies that are at a distance from vaccination centres.”
O’Loughlin said this will “allow people to be vaccinated as part of the national programme in their local pharmacy, instead of having to travel however far to a distant vaccination centre”.
“People have been clamouring to get vaccinated in their local pharmacy, by their local pharmacist, and there’s been a lot of public frustration that’s just taken so long to get the vaccines delivered to pharmacies, but certainly the objective now is to vaccinate people in their local community, rather than them all having to travel to vaccination centres,” he added.
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They make the very elderly travel to vaccination centres, for example, Connemara all the way over to Ballybrit which could take 1.5 to 2 hours depending on city traffic, but the 40 years olds can stroll down to their local pharmacy.
Easy to know a government department, unions and money are all involved.
@JedBartlett: or maybe its that vaccine supply is only now reaching the point where we can look to start rollout them out via pharmacies.
Our rollout has been going great but please find something to moan about.
@Fozz: Or maybe it reached that point months ago. I’ve no issue with the rollout apart from the fact it could be been rolled out in more venues for a while now. If you read the article you’ll see the IPU have said the HSE has been delaying this for months now.
But don’t let that get in the way of your blind faith in all things government.
@JedBartlett: I drove 3 hours to my local GP in my home town to get the vaccine and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Stop whinging and just get it done.
@JedBartlett: what vaccine were they going to administer? The is very little J&J availably and they don’t have suitable freezers to store the others. People like you will blame the government regardless of whose fault it is.
@JedBartlett: the IPU were moaning because they wanted a slice of the GP action, €35 per shot plus €10. Handy money. Why else do you think they might have been whinging when the vaccination programme has been going so well?
@Fozz: Shhhh! No place for reasonable opinions devoid of moaning and conspiracies on this forum. You must think this is a place for logic and rational discussion!
@Johnny: If you’re driving for 3 hours then they’re not your local gp are they?
They’re the gp in your home town, not your local gp.
@GrumpyAulFella: I think plenty GPs would argue with the “handy money” part. Actually putting an injection in the arm is handy. There was a lot of admin in getting to that place. Plenty days where the vaccine didn’t show up or not enough arrived. Plenty of concerned calls and trying to organize people
@John Buckley: they dont need freezers to store them. The GPs dont have them. The vaccine is taken from the holding freezer and sent to the GP, but could be pharmacy too, once defrosted they have 5 days to use them. Thats why a GP service will phone any patient regardless of risk or age if they are going to have vaccines left over on a Friday. But pharmacies could have been doing this for months.
@Fozz: Actually the roll out is very slow in comparison to other countries. It could have been done a lot sooner. Stephen, is that you?
@John Buckley: lol, they have plenty.
@JedBartlett: The IPU are not happy because they wanted their members administering vaccines…at €70–€80 a pop. It wouldn’t have sped up the vaccination program as what limited supply was available was being administered with very little delay. They want their slice of the pie, nothing more.
@Eoin Scanlon: agreed but it’s not rocket science either. Brought the Dad down for his and there were 6 ahead of him, in for the injection within 15m, 15m sitting down afterwards and away we went. Nice little production line going at €45 a pop.
@JedBartlett: local GPs were already doing it. Do you just gripe by default?
@JedBartlett: Would you like to do something about it then ? instead of writing garbage moaning comments on The Journal for likes,
Muppet…. should have happened months ago
@Eddie Michael: months ago? When vaccines were so scarce? It is never too late to do something. I welcome the news, far too many people are having to commute to get a vaccine.
@Ally Mc Culladgh: instead of his fumbling announcements on vaccine Centres it should have been pharmacist….
@Eddie Michael: at the time we really only had Pfizer vaccines to be stored below freezing conditions lower than hospital refrigerators, how many pharmacies have those facilities available at the time?
@Ally Mc Culladgh: requires being proactive and planning, rather than hap hazard reactivate sound bites….
@Eddie Michael: There was, vaccine centres opened with the scarce few vaccines we had, made sense to have central locations to store the vaccine which required very specialised storage.
We opened up more vaccine centres.
We opened up mass test centres.
We went from 30-50k vaccines to 250k-300k.
We improved the vaccination system.
Now we are at a point that pharmacies can be in a position to administer the vaccines.
More planning will take place to get that system in place and itll be great post covid if we are to need a booster shot in a years time.
@Ally Mc Culladgh: pharmacists could store them the same way as GPs. They dont store them in the freezer. The central storage is in the frozen condition. They are delivered to GPs defrosting or defrosted with 5 or 4 days shelf life in a regular fridge. Eddie is right the pharmacists could have been utilised long before the mass vaccination centres.
Unbelievable it could only happen in Ireland. The older generation some with no cars has to travel up to 100 km to a vaccine centre. Now the younger population all with cars can be vaccinated locally.
@trebloc01: What’s your point? Would you prefer they didn’t involve pharmacists now? The way some people go on you would think every country outside of Ireland was some perfect utopia. Btw….huge portion of young people in cities without cars!
@trebloc01: maybe it’s cause the supply is better and if you think all the younger population have cars,you mistaken,but ya Ireland is the worst country in the world, everything is wrong with it.
@trebloc01: it’s not like ordering Dominoes. A bit of effort is required. It’s a potential life saving measure after all.
@trebloc01: Not like ‘the older generation’ have lot on tho.
@trebloc01: first world problem..imagine, just imagine your grandmother was from nigeria or somewhere, or even your mother or father.. you probably haven’t even heard of a vaccine yet…be thankful we live in one of the richest countries in the world , and 100k travel is your bone of contention…
@trebloc01: yeah.. unbelievable … should take a look at countries like India .. or Brazil if you want to see unbelievable . How far do you think people in the UK travel for vaccinations .. round the corner ? I don’t think so.
I can’t be negative about this. This is a good thing.
@Wilson Spinach: doesn’t stop a lot of people on here
Would it surprise you if I told you pharmacists in the U.K. (horsing them out for months) get paid £12.50? (Including entering data into the NHS system).
@Theportobello: why do you think the IPU have been chomping at the bit? This had nothing to do with a humanitarian public service, as they make out. It was all to get on that GP gravy train.
@GrumpyAulFella: you’d love to know how that rate was arrived at!
@Theportobello: they’re mostly administrating AZ over there, completely different kettle of fish to storing, agitating and preparing Pfizer. Storage at those massively low numbers not an issue anymore after testing confirmed could be stored in more reasonable freezing conditions and supplying increasing I would say were the big drivers.
@SPQH: nope. Same per vaccine regardless. AZ is under 50% of U.K. jabs
Easy money.
@Will Roche: do you work for free? Fair play
@Will Roche: Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a classic Journal moaner…
@Dermot Sexton: no I don’t thanks for the comment. I’m not saying anything negative about it. I just said easy money for the pharmacists fair play. Again thanks for you comment :)
@Kev: not moaning Kev with no surname. I said easy money so fair play to Pharmacists. :) Thanks for your comment though.
It’s a bit late now, my friend who lost both his legs and is wheelchair bound, was made travel from gort to bloody athlone to get his first covid dose Two weeks ago. We had elderly from all over galway who had to find their way to the vaccination center in the race course in ballybrit.
@Michael Healy: Better late that never? Should speed up the vaccinations so that can’t be a bag thing?
@Sal Paradise: *bad
@Michael Healy: is there no wheelchair association in that area your friend is in I say this coz my girlfriends mother is wheelchair bound and in Rural Ballybunion the wheelchair association picked her up and loads of others and took them to a vaccination centre in Beaufort Co Kerry my girlfriends dad got his injections at his GP and the GPs and HSE health centre here in Wexford are administering vaccines to people with special needs
@Michael Healy: yet they got vaccinated….God, how unlucky they are, one day out of their way, they must really understand what it must feel like for 90% of the poor countries that won’t get vaccinated for months and probably die…hope they get over the trauma soon..
What are the moaners going to do when this is over. Weather maybe!!!!
@Eddie Benson: Unbelievable isn’t it. Things can always be done better but some people will never be happy. You can bet your house that those that just moan about everything have done nothing of note with their lives, and never will.
Finally! Long past time for this
About time. However, you think it was bad with the hospitals giving it to people ahead of the queue, what’s to stop pharmacies doing the same? How will it be monitored?
@Glammymammy: because there is a MOUNTAIN of paperwork that has to be submitted to the HSE in regards to vaccinations when administered in pharmacy. And as it stands Pharmacist’s can only vaccinate over 50’s. Now, most of this people have already been offered one via the centres or GP’s. There would be an immediate rejection of patient data if their birthdate is under the age 50 category before you even administer said vaccine. As the batch no, date and patient info must be inputted previous to the actual injection
Great news from chief waffler Donnelly if he was a bar of chocolate he’d eat himself
Jesus wept. 6 months later. Crazy government.
Must be an Election on the horizon, Rusty Nuts, looking for voters.
@Peter Bell: they just announced a retrospective property tax on new builds from 2013 onwards, I don’t think they’ll be cheered on in the polls
Anyone know why the vaccine record cards are different colours? I know two people who are fully vaccinated. One received a green card, the other a red card?
@Ann Neylan: the second one committed two bookable offences?
@Ann Neylan: the red one is for one Jab ie J and J. The green is for 2 jabs ie Pfizer.
Headline should say “Pharmacies”
Pharmacists ate already administering vaccines in centres.
Overnight they will go from handing out prescribed medicine over the counterlike a cashier to administering vaccines. Will Lidl and Aldi be next?
@Daithi De Roiste: pharmacists have been administering flu vaccines for years.
And they don’t hand out meds like they’re smarties. Literally takes three people to put together one simple prescription. One to dispense one to collect one to check item, strength, dosage and quantity are correct. Not to mention checking for any possible interactions that could cause an adverse effect.
Too Many Fianna Fallers on here
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