Tanaiste Leo Varadkar has said that AstraZeneca vaccine doses could be administered to younger age cohorts in July and July due to “excess” doses being available.
He said that Ireland does not have the excess stock of J&J jabs to provide this access but that it will soon have “hundreds and thousands” of AstraZeneca vaccines available after older age groups have received two doses.
“We do have excess AstraZeneca vaccines, we may over the course of the next couple of weeks have hundreds of thousands of excess AZ vaccines and it would be a shame not to use them,” he said.
At present, the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine is not recommended for people under the age of 50 but Varadkar said today that engagement is underway with the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) about whether this could change.