Sir, – As a practising pharmacist, I fully support and welcome the Cabinet’s decision to bring pharmacists and GPs on board with the State’s Covid-19 vaccination programme (News, January 19th).
Unfortunately, however, the Department of Health and the HSE have not yet come forward with a date for when pharmacists, including pharmacist vaccinators, are to be vaccinated themselves.
As the HSE will be aware, when vaccinated the recipient requires a number of weeks before sufficient immunity is achieved, depending on the vaccine type.
The Minister of Health has assured the public that stocks of the AstraZeneca vaccine are to be sourced early and to be deployed upon authorisation by the European Medicines Agency.
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For this to happen in a timely fashion, then surely our pharmacist vaccinators should be vaccinated immediately, as has already begun for our nursing and general practice colleagues. – Yours, etc,
Dr THEO RYAN, MPSI
School of Pharmacy
and Pharmaceutical
Sciences,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.