“Anybody who has had the opportunity and hasn’t come forward for vaccination… you’re really putting yourself at risk."
HSE CEO Paul Reid has said that high community transmission could see Covid-19 cases throughout the country "breakthrough" to people who have been vaccinated.
Reid
told Newtalk's The Hard Shoulder on Thursday that while the Covid-19 vaccines offer a "strong level of protection", the higher community transmission is - the more likely it will be that the virus will "breakthrough" to the older, fully vaccinated age cohorts.
“Vaccines work, and it’s well-proven they work - just to reassure people," he said.
Reid added that anyone who has declined the Covid-19 vaccine is really putting themselves at risk, saying that the risk of being impacted by the disease is reduced "very significantly" after vaccination.
“Anybody who has had the opportunity and hasn’t come forward for vaccination… you’re really putting yourself at risk. You reduce your risk very significantly by coming forward," he said.
Reid said that the HSE has "reasonable levels of confidence" that they will be able to "tackle the hurdle" of the recent increase in cases due to the Delta variant.
“We all want to see the finish line… in trying to get there, we do have another big hurdle in front of us," he said.
"But, we should tackle that hurdle with reasonable levels of confidence."
As of midnight on Wednesday 21 July, the Department of Health was notified of 1,189 new cases of Covid-19 as incidence rates in every county have increased over the past week.
Of the 1,189 cases, 95 are in hospital and 22 are in intensive care units as case numbers in the country have continued to rise rapidly in recent days.
