It has since been announced that the first vaccines may be administered on Tuesday, a day earlier than planned.
Leo Varadkar has said he doesn’t know why vaccines won’t be given out until Wednesday, despite them having arrived into Ireland on Saturday.
In an interview with Gavan Reilly, An Tánaiste said he wasn’t “100% sure” why we were waiting until Wednesday to begin giving out the Covid-19 vaccine.
He said: “What I’m told is it just takes a couple of days to organise things – and while you could have done a few people in the initial days, that the authorities thought it was better to start on Wednesday and start it properly, if you like.
“It is going to begin in earnest on Wednesday, we’ve 10,000 doses that have arrived, we’ll have roughly 40,000 doses arriving every week from January”.
He also said that Ireland will “catch up” on the rest of the EU and other parts of Europe, where many countries have already begun vaccinating. He also stressed that it is not a race.
“We’re part of the European system, we get 1.11% of the vaccine – and that’s in proportion with our population – and I think we probably will start a little bit slower than other countries, but we will catch up”.
“I don’t see it as a race, I think it’s important that we do it right”.
Since then, CEO of the HSE Paul Reid said that he expects some vaccinations to begin on Tuesday 29 December, a day earlier than previously planned.
The order in which the vaccine is going to be given out in Ireland can be seen here.
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