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04th Mar 2021

Impact of vaccination on healthcare workers “phenomenal”

Rudi Kinsella

hospitals ireland

Excellent news.

The impact the Covid-19 vaccination has had on healthcare workers across Ireland has been “phenomenal”, according to the President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and Infectious Diseases Consultant at Cork University Hospital.

Professor Mary Horgan said that the numbers of healthcare workers becoming infected with Covid-19 “just turned off” last month, implying the vaccine is having a positive impact.

She said: “It’s been phenomenal. We were tracking the number of healthcare workers infected from January into February and essentially it just turned off in February, and likewise the number of hospital admissions.”

Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne she said that this good news is much needed, as the pressure on healthcare workers has been “incessant for over a year”.

You can listen back to the interview here.

Thursday saw news emerge that the European Medicines Agency has announced it has started a rolling review of Sputnik V (Gam-COVID-Vac), a Covid vaccine developed by Russia’s Gamaleya National Centre of Epidemiology and Microbiology.

Meanwhile, Ireland missed last week’s target of 100,000 vaccines by over 18,000.

From Monday, 22 February to Sunday, 28 February, the HSE administered 81,843 doses, 18,157 short of the amount Leo Varadkar said would be given out.

This is believed to be due to delivery issues.