The Irish Times view on the vaccination programme: keeping pace

In the spring the Government set a target of giving at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine to 80 per cent of the adult population by the end of June. As of yesterday, 67 per cent had received a first dose.

In reality the Government has limited enough control over the speed of the rollout. Manufacturers AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have not even come close to meeting their delivery pledges over the past three months, and several changes in the advice from the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac) as to which vaccines can be used for different age cohorts have slowed down the programme.

Where the Government can influence the campaign is principally through getting shots into people's arms as quickly as possible after they land on Irish soil, and on this the Health Service Executive (HSE) and its vaccination teams have done a remarkable job. Helped by extremely high public take-up, almost 4.1 million doses have been administered in the Republic to date; last week alone some 340,000 shots went into people's arms. That's a huge logistical feat.

Yet even with such high levels of coverage in the population, the need for continuing rapid rollout is intensifying rather than abating. That’s due to the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant, which has prompted Government to pause the reopening. In that context, it would have been unthinkable to allow large stocks of effective vaccines to sit in storage due to cautious advice from Niac on the use of adenovirus-based vaccines in younger people. Fortunately Niac cleared the way for the use of those vaccines in younger cohorts earlier this week, meaning that pharmacies should be able to step up their own vaccines services in coming weeks.

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Despite good progress, a very large proportion of the population remains unprotected from Covid-19. The HSE has said deliveries are now at their peak, implying that they will soon begin to reduce. That makes it all the more important to ensure that the system keeps pace with deliveries and that vaccines win the race against the variant.