WARNINGS about a "pandemic of the unvaccinated" were made by an EU chief yesterday as a Northern Ireland man pleaded with people to get jabbed after losing two family members to Covid.
A distraught Kevin McAllister said his 32-year-old daugther, Sammie-Jo, a healthy mother-of-four, would still be alive today if she had been vaccinated.
Mr McAllister's ex-partner and Sammy-Jo's mother also lost her life to the virus. She too had not taken up the offer of a vaccine. Both women were care workers.
With vaccine uptake rates in the north well below that of the Republic, the human cost is now being seen in the mounting death toll.
Latest figures show three times more people are dying from coronavirus in the north compared to the south in this latest wave of the pandemic, an astonishing statistic for one small island.
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Vaccine chief 'applauds' bravery of bereaved father urging people to get jabbed
Experts say that vaccination is the not sole reason - other factors such as people no longer obeying mask wearing/hand hygiene rules and and higher areas of deprivation north of the border are cited - but there is no doubt that vaccines are key in preventing people from becoming seriously ill and dying.
Some of the most compelling data was released by the UK Office of National Statistics earlier this week in its first study of deaths by vaccination status, which found that around 99 per cent of Covid-19 deaths between January and July this year were in people who had not had two doses.
In Northern Ireland, health officials have spent the past two months rolling out different campaigns urging people to come forward for jabs.
But despite mobile pop-up clinics, 'jabathons' and college campus drives, figures have shifted very slowly - particularly among younger people.
While the vaccination of 87 per cent of the adult population in the north still represents a major success - the intial target was lower - the highly infectious Delta variant is currently ravaging an already stuggling hospital system.
Just over a quarter of the under-30s are not jabbed.
For the woman overseeing the north's Covid vaccianation programme, Patricia Donnelly, the challenge ahead is immense as winter pressures escalate and GPs attempt to deliver the 'booster' to almost one million of the over-50s and clinically vulnerable.
Efforts continue to increase vaccine uptake to 90 per cent of the population - which health chiefs say will slash hospital admissions and death rates by half.
In an interview with The Irish News today, Ms Donnelly says that despite the mutiple public information campaigns to promote jabs, it is the heartbreaking stories of tragic loss that resonate most with people - and "applauded" Mr McAllister for speaking out during his "great grief".
The bereaved father spoke yesterday of how he will be "haunted" for the rest of his life by his loss and urged people to ignore social media misinformation and instead "listen to the experts".
For those still wavering, they should heed not just the advice of health experts but reflect on the experience of people like Kevin McAllister.
