Person living outside State received nine Covid booster appointments, Dáil hears

A person has reported receiving nine appointments for a Covid-19 booster shot, despite no longer living in the State, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has told the Dáil.

Ms McDonald said there have been problems with the alignment of the booster booking system between the Health Service Executive (HSE), general practitioners and pharmacies.

“This means that people have received multiple appointments which stay on the system, even when people try to cancel,” Ms McDonald said during Leaders’ Questions on Tuesday.

“One person has reported receiving nine appointments, been declared a no-show for each one, despite no longer living in the State. There have been many instances of people receiving up to five appointments.”

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Ms McDonald claimed the Government’s “lack of forward planning” has led to “real issues with the rollout of the booster” programme.

She also said there are 500 less vaccinators working since the summer “which means the booster campaign is now operating at two-thirds of the capacity of the original rollout”.

“How has this happened? Clearly, we shouldn’t now be facing the need to scramble for vaccinators again, that capacity should have been hardwired into the system,” she said.

“Two years on and there is still a lack of preparation and leadership from Government and that’s why we are seeing winding queues and big delays outside vaccination centres and it’s why some people have been turned away from the centres.”

‘More complex’

In response, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said 1.25 million booster doses have been administered to date and the booster campaign has been “more complex” than the first programme .

He said the Government has been working with HSE and public health officials to expand and extend the Covid-19 vaccination programme in recent days. Mr Martin said the key issue now is “to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can”.

“That means extending the hours in terms of the vaccination centres and getting more expansion again, in terms of the other two channels, utilisation of our primary care system through GPs and through pharmacies. We’re going to utilise all capacity at our disposal,” he said.

Social Democrats co-leader Róisín Shortall also said there needed to be “an absolute focus” on ramping up the booster campaign. The Dublin North-West TD called for an increased “national effort” and said there is clearly not enough vaccination staff.

“Shouldn’t we be seeking staff everywhere we can? The booking system itself has been causing havoc, and those issues are still not resolved and need to be tackled immediately. GPs and pharmacies clearly have capacity to do much more,” she added.

Ms Shortall said it didn’t seem to make sense that “GPs and pharmacies are forced to rigidly adhere to age cohorts in the rollout as mandated by the HSE and only administer to people over 50”.

“I’m particularly concerned, for example, about people under 50 who got the [Johnson & Johnson] vaccine in the early part of the summer and that’s a very rapidly waning vaccine,” she said.

Mr Martin added that the Defence Forces will be increasing their involvement in supporting the booster programme and that resources were not an issue. He said testing for the virus will also be ramped up significantly from about 225,000 to 300,000 by the end of the year, which would involve PCR and antigen testing.