He said Ireland received a “minimal supply” of the vaccine this month.
HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid has said that there are “some concerns” about the delivery schedule for the Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) Covid-19 vaccine.
During a HSE briefing on Thursday, he said that Ireland received a “minimal supply” of the J&J vaccine this month, adding that details for June haven’t been made available yet.
According to Reid, more than 2.2 million vaccines have been administered across Ireland to date.
More than 1.6 million people have now received their first dose, with 43% of the adult population receiving at least one vaccine dose.
Thursday of last week saw the highest number of vaccines administered to date at 56,000.
The HSE Chief added that they are on target to deliver between 260,000 and 280,000 vaccines in the coming week.
Reid also confirmed that there were 250,000 vaccines given out last week in vaccination centres.
The figure does not include data from GPs due to last week’s cyber-attack on the HSE.
Early on Friday, the HSE announced it had temporarily shut down its IT system after it was targeted in a “significant ransomware attack”.
Described as possibly the most significant cybercrime attack on the Irish state by Minister of State for eGovernment Ossian Smyth, it has caused major disruptions to health services across the country.
A further attempted cyber attack was carried out on the Department of Health after the ransomware attack on the Health Service Executive (HSE) last week.
The Department has shut down its systems and is working to safely restore its data amid the attack and has been “working to respond” to the incident since Thursday.
A digital note from the cybercrime group, Wizard Spider who is believed to be responsible has been left on the Department’s IT systems.
The note is believed to be similar to the one discovered amid the HSE hack earlier this week.
The Department of Health confirmed that The National Cyber Security Centre, along with the Gardaí and the Defence Forces, is currently investigating the attacks.
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