Booster vaccines for over-60s
Deputy Nash welcomed booster doses for over-60s but questioned the timing and the review of boosters for healthcare workers. The Taoiseach said vaccine decisions were clinical matters for NIAC and defended the overall vaccination programme.
Booster vaccines for those aged over 60 will now be given with immediate effect. We welcome and support that initiative. Will the over-60s have to wait six months, given that there is a minimum interval of five months between shots? Will that not mean that many will not get their booster shot until early next year? The Taoiseach said that the national immunisation advisory committee, NIAC, provided advice to him and the Chief Medical Officer, CMO, that it will keep the administration of vaccine boosters to healthcare workers under examination and review. Our front-line healthcare workers were some of the first vaccinated and are those most at risk of being exposed to Covid at work. Modelling shows that we could have up to 1,000 patients with Covid in hospital in November and there could be up to 200 people in ICU. Is now not the right time to roll out the booster shots quickly to our front-line workers? It would protect those who will be most exposed and who will need to be available to work to ensure that our hospitals are not understaffed. Would the Government not agree to give the booster to front-line healthcare workers now?
Comment on this
I am sure that the Deputy will agree that the administration of vaccines has to be a clinical issue. We are not experts in this House. I know what we would like. I have concerns about the healthcare workers. I would like them to get boosters but I have to defer to the expert advice of NIAC. We have done this throughout various vaccination programmes before the pandemic. If you stand back from it all, it gives us confidence in vaccine programmes. The fact that we achieved a 93% vaccination uptake rate in itself illustrates a degree of confidence among the general population in our vaccine decision-making process. If we were to diverge from that, no matter how tempted we might be, and start making up our own rules as we go about who should get a vaccine and when, that could damage overall confidence in the vaccination programme. In the correspondence, NIAC states that it is keeping this issue under examination.