People aged 40 and above can book for their Covid vaccine booster shots from next week, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has confirmed. The 15-minute waiting time for booster shots at the vaccination centres will also be waived off to allow more to receive it, the Minister has added.
The decision to waive off the waiting time comes following an advice from the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) and a number of GPs and pharmacists in the country.
“Particularly for our GP and our pharmacists, what they signalled was that it would be very very useful in terms of being able to vaccinate more people,” he told RTE.
Meanwhile Mr. Donnelly has said the hospitalisations due to the Omicron variant could match or even exceed the spike seen last January. As the Irish Examiner reports, Donnelly has made it clear that the high number of cases in the UK poses a big risk to this country.
“In terms of the number of cases, yes, it could well be it could be more in terms of the number of hospitalizations [compared to January of this year]. Yes, that that is entirely possible,” said the Minister while speaking at the government buildings.
“We’ve been learning more and more as we’ve been going so Omicron at this point, that constitutes a very significant risk for the country. We’ve seen the UK has just reported its highest Covid cases ever.”
Meanwhile further 24 cases of Omicron variant have been confirmed in Ireland which brings the total number of Omicron cases to 42.
A new report published by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) is also concerning which says 200 people die of Covid each month in the country for the last three months. 177 deaths reported in September 2021, 207 in October and 214 in November. The total deaths so far is 5,835.
47 Covid deaths have been confirmed in December so far.