Six million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine will have been administered in Ireland by today.
75% of adults will be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 from today (5 August) as Ireland is set to hit two "significant milestones" in its vaccination rollout.
With 5.99 million vaccine doses administered up to Wednesday night, Ireland will surpass 6 million doses on Thursday.
Confirming the news on Twitter on Thursday morning, Chair of the High Level Task Force on COVID-19 vaccination Brian MacCraith said: "With over 5.99 million doses administered up to last night, today we will reach two significant milestones in the vaccine rollout.
"Six million doses administered, 75% of adults fully vaccinated. A great national effort involved in achieving these."
https://twitter.com/muirtheimhne/status/1423169208679010304?s=21
It comes as the Health Service Executive (HSE) has said that the vaccine portal should open for children aged between 12 to 15 within the next two weeks.
Registration for the jab opened for all those aged over 16 last week, just one week after it opened for everyone aged over 18.
The rollout is now set to be extended to younger teenagers in the age 12 to 15 cohort after the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) approved the jab for use in younger teens recently.
Damien McCallion, the HSE's National Lead for the Covid-19 vaccination programme, told
Newstalk's On The Record programme on Sunday that the HSE's IT systems will need to be upgraded before the rollout extends to the age group - however, they are hopeful to be able to announce a date this week.
“Although we had a sense this was coming and we had started working on that, the systems were based on an adult-based [rollout]," he said.
“We would expect to open it within the next two weeks - we’d hope to announce the date this week coming. It will be a model where we’ll use the vaccine centres, but also GPs and pharmacies as well.”
