Vaccines – rapid deployment is crucial

Sir, – After nine months of keeping daily count of Covid-19 cases and related deaths, how about we now start to keep count of daily vaccinations? – Yours, etc,

BERNADETTE KENNEDY,

Mullinavat,

Co Kilkenny.

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Sir, – It has been noted that there may be a shortage of medical personnel available to roll out the vaccine quickly.

Can I make a suggestion? Just drop the test-and-trace regime, especially the latter. It hasn’t worked, it’s too late, the virus is now rampant in the community, so we need to stop wasting more time on this useless exercise.

Instead, put all the available personnel, time and money into vaccinating the population.

There are fewer than five million people in the country, and if every village and town hall centre was set up with military precision to vaccinate everyone in a given area, there is no reason why the vast majority of the population couldn’t be immunised by the end of February.

Just do it! There will be a revolution if the Government doesn’t get its act together this time. – Yours, etc,

MARGARET O’NEILL,

Ardross,

New Ross,

Co Wexford.

Sir, – We have a Government and their medical advisers closing businesses, then opening them up, and then closing them again.

Amid this “whack-a-mole” reaction to this crisis, we the public have been given little or no information about the infrastructure in the implementation and distribution of a vaccine programme.

Deployment matters, and if a country has not done enough to prepare for the massive distribution of the vaccine in the months to come, there will be a lot more infections and deaths that could have been avoided.

We have had multiple HSE pamphlets telling us how to behave. How about multiple HSE pamphlets informing us of a vaccine programme?

The authorities here should wise up or we will sink economically and psychologically. – Yours, etc,

RICHARD RODGERS,

Malahide,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – I read in The Irish Times (News, December 22nd) that the European Union has given the green light to the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine and that Ireland will receive 9,750 doses by the end of the week. This is welcome news.

I also read that Israel has started a massive vaccination programme, followed by those recipients of the vaccine being issued with a “green passport” to prove they have been vaccinated.

This means the passport carrier will avoid isolation if returning from abroad.

I hope our Government can learn from this initiative and introduce similar measures here. – Yours, etc,

DAVID McCLEAN,

Hollystown,

Dublin 15.