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THE MINISTER FOR Health has said children at high risk of serious illness from Covid-19 will be prioritised in the next stage of the vaccine rollout.
Stephen Donnelly also said children won’t need to receive a Covid vaccine in order to return to school.
He told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that such a move is “not on the cards and won’t be on the cards”.
He was speaking after it was announced that Covid vaccines will be made available to children aged between 12 and 15 years. It follows new advice from the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC).
While a date for the commencement of these vaccinations wasn’t given, the Minister said it is expected to involve a combination of vaccine centres and GPs, and consist of the two mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna (Spikevax) and Pfizer-BioNTech (Comirnaty).
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced in May that the Pfizer vaccine was safe and effective for use in people aged 12 and up, and that the benefits outweigh the risks.
A similar recommendation was made for Moderna’s vaccine last Friday.
An information campaign is set to be launched to ensure parents are fully informed about the safety and efficacy of Covid vaccines in children.
The Minister for Health also confirmed that booster shots for adults will be made available alongside the winter flu vaccination programme, to begin in September, for residents of long term care facilities, frontline healthcare workers, people aged 80 and over, and those who are immunocompromised.
“The biggest priority for me has been 12- to 15-year-olds with underlying conditions,” Donnelly said.
We’re obviously doing the planning now and poring over the NIAC advice, but I think it’s likely there will be a role for GPs, particularly where parents have a child with underlying conditions, they have a relationship with a GP, they’d like to talk to their GP.
“Parents will have some reasonable questions they’ll want to discuss.”
Donnelly added that 12- to 15-year-olds would be accompanied by an adult when receiving their vaccine.
The Minister also defended the government’s decision to offer vaccines to this age demographic, despite their comparatively low risk of serious illness, citing both the benefit of protecting adolescents from the impact of Long Covid as well as the benefits for the wider community.
As well as those with underlying conditions, children who live with or are in contact with people with underlying conditions are likely to be prioritised.
Under 12s
Donnelly said he did not anticipate a decision to be made on the rollout of Covid vaccines to children under the age of 12 this year. Any such move would first have to be approved by the European Medicines Agency.
Authorities in the United States expect approval to be granted ‘within months’ for administering vaccines to those aged under 12.
Donnelly added that he is examining how Ireland can play a “very strong role” internationally in the distribution of vaccines to low-income countries through programmes such as Covax and Gavi.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged rich countries to delay the vaccination of children and instead donate surplus vaccines for distribution to developing countries.
“I think it is absolutely ethical and right that we protect our own children, and that we protect our own community, but that’s not enough,” Donnelly said.
WHO previously advised that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is suitable for use in people aged 12 and above, showing high efficacy and safety, and that countries should consider vaccinating younger people – in particular those at high risk of serious illness - if a large proportion of other age groups are already vaccinated.
Covid vaccines are now available to everyone aged 16 and up in Ireland, with the HSE portal opening for those aged 16 and 17 yesterday. “Well in excess” of 10,000 people signed up within the first two hours, Donnelly said.
As of 27 July, 70.73% of Ireland’s adult population is now fully vaccinated, with 9.68% partially vaccinated.
HSE chief executive Paul Reid said that more than 50,000 doses were administered yesterday.
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It’s all well and good to keep branches open a little later, but it’s of no use to those of us on holidays abroad with no access to our pay.
Or those of us who work shifts! They should immediately give all affected a fee free overdraught. Because of not having had a pay slip issued yet, they refused me cash today….bastards.
that is fckucking terrible Dave. Im facing the same shite on wednesday, and if i dont get my pay slip to them i miss my direct debit and my mortgage payment. And I start nights on wednesday
In the same boat with dd’s but I called a couple of companies yesterday and they said that the dd hadnt been rejected, it was showing as hanging and should go through, just late, when ulster get around to processing it and that as said companies know about the situation they won’t be penalising me.
The same Central Bank that practises”light touch regulation”. I’m sure Ulster Bank are cacking themselves.
That should sort it out so now – no doubt UB were just kicking back until the CB ‘pressed’ them.
Thought the same thing. Finally someone stepped in to have a stern word. It’s about time …
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/rbs_natwest_what_went_wrong/
“The tech problems at the RBS banking group that left millions of people unable to access money for four days last week were caused by a failure in a piece of batch scheduling software, sources have told The Register.
And at least some of the support staff for that software have been outsourced to India – as recently as February.”
Here’s how actual regulation works in the US – don’t process cheques for more than 24 hours?
Ok, Federal Reserve steps in. Your bank is probably shut down and its assets redistributed to other banks.
Oh, and how are the cost savings on all those outsourced IT workers looking now? Where are the 1500 workers that were laid off? Too busy to help? Aw shucks. By the way, did you ever catch the guy who was selling a computer with customer data on ebay?
I’m at a bit of a loss here. If they’re dealing with a backlog you would expect that to be cleared in an orderly fashion. My wages were due today, but given what’s going on I didn’t expect to be able to access the funds until the end of week at least. However, this morning when I checked my balance the money was there . Seems a bit odd, don’t u think??
Not alot the central bank can do, problems also in royal bank of scotland and natwest. Its not good for the people who cannot access their accounts.
I posted a cheque to my account last Wednesday and am still waiting for it to be processed and show in my balance. I’m sure things are a lot easier for bankers on a huge salary but when you need the money to buy the necessities and to pay bills, it’s a different story. nMy guess as to what happened is that they were making changes to their systems to allow for changes in transaction fee on accounts and someone fecked something up.
What I heard from an inside source is that they were upgrading the system (CAC7?) that basically is the master plan for every individual batch operation that the runs overnight. This upgrade didn’t go as planned so apparently they rolled back to the older version. It seems that the masterplan was no longer present in the system so no jobs were run overnight and hence the chaos started. This is inline with what The Register are saying.
The story is that this batching activity was moved offshore so I’d imagine there’s some old staff getting some handsome short term contracts to sort this out!!
You’ve got to wonder why they were upgrading all three banks at the same time. It would be bizarre if any bonuses were paid in this bank this year. It’s a basket case and I’m one of their customers. I was fortunate that my wages were processed the day before this happened!
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