Few options in thwarted vaccine rollout and little basis for optimism

The Government remains under fierce political pressure over the supply of vaccines, as the constantly changing promises of supplies from AstraZeneca translate into missed targets, vocal GPs and disappointed citizens.

But as the Dáil question and answer session with Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly on Thursday made clear, there is little enough the coalition can do about this now. It’s also pretty clear that nobody else has any better ideas.

“There is real frustration out there with the rollout of the vaccine,” Sinn Féin’s health spokesman David Cullinane told Donnelly during the debate.

He’s right about that. And even if the general sense that the public is at the end of its tether is as much about the long lockdown as it is about the vaccine programme, the relatively slow progress of the rollout gives people a focus for their frustration and, in some cases, anger.

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The Government has two problems with the vaccination programme. The first is that, compared to the UK, the supply of vaccines is sparse, and so the rate of vaccination is much lower. There is not much it can do about that immediately.

Nimbler work and greater foresight several months ago might have increased by a bit the numbers available now, but the suggestion that a small country would be better-off outside the EU framework, bidding against large countries for scarce supplies, is one that few would have entertained seriously last year. Nor is there much point to a rash of vaccine ordering now; by the time they arrive, Ireland expects to have plenty.

No spares

As Europe Correspondent Naomi O'Leary pointed out on Wednesday, there are no spare vaccines around right now to lobby for. Ireland can't force AstraZeneca to deliver what it has.

Much of the Opposition questioning of Donnelly implicitly recognised this. Cullinane exhorted the Minister to “fix the problems that are under his control as quickly as he can”. Not advice you could quibble with, though it may have occurred to the Minister before now.

The second problem is that the rollout has been patchy in parts, with GPs left short of supplies and some vaccinations postponed by weeks. Every TD has a story of several GPs left empty-handed. Naturally, such stories tend to be amplified, but not even the programme’s strongest defenders would claim they have not been real. In truth, this is a much smaller problem than that of supply, but the two get mixed up.

The administration of the vaccines received is a matter very much within the hands of the Government or the Health Service Executive. As was the decision – openly regretted by many in the Government – not to give the AstraZeneca vaccine to the over-70s. One person involved in the process estimates that this put the programme back by three weeks. Others agitate for it to be reversed, but there is no sign of that.

Big ramp-up

Despite all this, behind the scenes there is a degree of confidence in Government about the rapid acceleration of vaccination scheduled to begin next month and run through the summer. It is not clear whether this is based on blind optimism or some firmer analysis, but it’s fair to say that there has been little in the vaccine programme so far that would convince people the big ramp-up in numbers will go smoothly.

What does this mean politically? The experience of Boris Johnson’s government has been that the public will forget poor management of the pandemic once vaccinations gather sufficient steam, and the end of restrictions comes into sight. Ministers here take perhaps excessive comfort from the example.

We are a long way away from that happy position . The Government will continue to bleed for some time yet.