It is “unclear” whether the Irish government will be able to reach its target of vaccinating 82% of the population by the end of June, due to supply issues, the Republic of Ireland's Health Minister told the Dáil.
Stephen Donnelly said there were “serious concerns” over the supply of the Janssen vaccine in the coming weeks.
“It looks like we’re going to get a significant under-delivery on Janssen and there are question marks as to what’s going to come in from AstraZeneca,” the Wicklow TD said.
The Republic of Ireland was due to receive 470,000 does of the Janssen vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson in June.
But the minister said the best-case scenario now is that about half of the doses – about 235,000 – would be delivered. In the worse-case scenario the figure could be “as low as around 60,000”.
Half of Ireland’s adult population will have received at least one Covid-19 vaccination by the end of this week, he said.
Mr Donnelly said that, to date, more than 2.5 million doses of vaccine have been administered and take-up is going from “strength to strength”.
Some 280,000 doses will be given this week.
Mr Donnelly said: “I’m delighted to be able to share that we believe that, by the end of this week, half the adult population in our country will have received at least one vaccine dose. And what a wonderful thing for us to be able to discuss and share this morning.
“I know colleagues will join me in expressing on behalf of the Government, on behalf of the Oireachtas, our enormous thanks to the thousands and thousands and thousands of men and women in every county right across our country in the vaccination centres, in the GP practices, the vaccination teams in the nursing homes.”
He added: “It’s a wonderful thing to think that, in the dark and brutal year that this country has faced, that by the end of this weekend half our adult population will have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.”
