Vaccine taskforce to strategise rollout
As news of various vaccines for Covid-19 breaks worldwide, Ireland has assembled a vaccine taskforce to provide information about any forthcoming vaccine when it is “available and accurate”.
News of three successful trials for vaccines broke in November, with Pfizer-BioNTech reporting a 95 per cent success rate with their vaccine, Moderna reporting 94.5 per cent efficacy and Oxford University reporting a 70 per cent success rate for their vaccine, but this rate was found to rise to 90 per cent when administered in a half dose and followed by a full dose a month later. Regulators in the United States are due to meet in early December to discuss whether or not to authorise the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for emergency use.
In November, the Government’s vaccine taskforce chairman, Professor Brian MacCraith said: “We got really excellent news this week, albeit by press release. I think there’s great excitement about the indicators of at least three of the vaccines; the Oxford University one, the Moderna one and the Pfizer one. Really strong indicators.”
The Government taskforce was established in early November under the chairmanship of the Department of Health, with Ireland due to receive approximately 1 per cent of the vaccines made available in Europe through the procurement process. Aside from former Dublin City University president MacCraith, others involved in the taskforce include Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan, HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid, Chairwoman of the senior officials group on Covid-19 Liz Canavan, Government Chief Information Officer Barry Lowry and Government Chief Procurement Officer Paul Quinn.
On announcing the makeup of the taskforce, Taoiseach Micheál Martin added that “there will be a nominee yet to be confirmed from the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation, a logistics cold chain expert and a project management expert”. Martin told the Dáil that the taskforce “will be tasked with coordinating preparations and ensuring the nationwide rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine when one is safe and ready to be distributed”. No concrete indicators have been given as to when that may be.
Speaking weeks later, Martin said that MacCraith hoped to have a rollout strategy ready for Government review by 11 December, with logistics such as who might be able to administer the vaccine outside of pharmacies and GPs to be worked out. The Taoiseach said: “It will require a national effort to get the vaccines out properly and safely and we are working with all stakeholders and people generally to cooperate with us. Again, a bit like inter-agency cooperation on Brexit, we will need inter-agency cooperation. All hands on deck for a national effort around the vaccine as well.”
Also within the taskforce’s remit is the decision around what groups will be vaccinated first, which was announced in early December after the vaccine was first administered elsewhere. The order of groups has been broken down into 15 groups, with those aged 65 and over in long-term care facilities coming in first, frontline healthcare workers in direct patient contact next and those aged 70 and over third. Key workers are sixth on the list, with residents of long-term care facilities aged 18–64 eighth and those with essential jobs who cannot avoid contact tenth. The last group to be vaccinated will be people aged under 18 and pregnant women.
