With less than two months until the Government’s target date of giving 80% of adults in Ireland at least a first dose, almost 270,000 vaccines were administered in Ireland in the seven days up to Tuesday.
Some 36% of people over the age of 16 have had a first dose, with 13.2% fully vaccinated.Almost 270,000 vaccines were administered in Ireland in the seven days up to Tuesday – an increase of 60,000 on the previous seven days. With just over six weeks until the Government’s 30 June target date for giving 80% of adults a first dose, recent improvements in the pace of the rollout puts the HSE on track to almost achieve this.
The current pace is calculated by extrapolating the most recent 14-day average of first doses administered per day. The expected increase is calculated using what the HSE and government expect to administer in total per week by certain milestones, and combined with an estimate of what percentage of these will be first doses.
There were no Johnson & Johnson or AstraZeneca doses delivered last week. However Ireland received by far its largest delivery of AstraZeneca the previous week consisting of 174,800 doses.The total number of doses due to arrive in Ireland across April, May and June is 4.5 million
The National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) this week confirmed a total of 1,664 new Covid-19 cases between Monday and Thursday – compared to 1,647 new cases reported over the same period last week and 1,708 the previous week.
Health officials have indicated Ireland needs four to five more weeks before vaccination makes a real dent in our Covid-19 rates, but certain counties remain problematic.
Donegal’s 14-day incidence rate of 270 cases per 100,000 people last week – more than twice the national average of 129.7 – has reduced to 248.8 as of Friday. Kildare has Ireland’s highest incidence of Covid-19 at 253.3 followed by Donegal and Dublin (199.5). Milford, Donegal currently has the highest Covid-19 incidence in the country at 472 cases per 100,000 followed by Newbridge in Kildare (414) and Nenagh in Tipperary (379). Meanwhile, hospital figures nationally continue to fall with 99 cases of Covid-19 hospitalised, 36 of which are in ICU.
The positivity rate currently stands at 2.4% having stood at 2.6% last Friday and 2.7% two weeks ago.Looking to Europe, Ireland still has one of the lowest incidence rates among European countries, behind Norway (108), Finland (53) and Malta (52). European countries with the highest rate of Covid-19 include Cyprus (797), Lithuania (599) and Sweden (558).