Booster jabs should be rolled out to every adult six months after their initial vaccination against Covid-19, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said.
A booster programme is already under way in the Republic for healthcare workers and those over 60, with the National Immunisation Advisory Council (Niac) also considering extending it to people under 60 with underlying conditions.
Mr Varadkar said he believes it will be necessary to expand the programme to the wider population.
He told reporters: “My sense, looking at the evidence that I’m reading in the medical journals, looking at examples from around the world, places like Israel, I think it will make sense to extend the booster programme to the wider population.
“Really any adult who is more than six months after their second dose. But the next group that we’re examining is people under 60, with a medical condition.
“The absolute focus now is on getting it out to the people over 60, through the GP, through the pharmacies and through the vaccine centres, and that’s going really well.”
Mr Varadkar has assessed the current Covid-19 situation as “fragile but stable”, having earlier warned that daily case numbers will reach 4,000 in the coming days.
“Cases are very high, and they are continuing to rise, we expect them to continue to rise over the next couple of days,” he said.
“But I think it’s important to say that we’ll never make any decision based on cases alone, we will always look at other factors. The number of people in hospital, the number of people in ICU, for example.
“Thankfully, that’s been relatively stable. Despite the increase in cases, the number of people in hospital, the number of people in ICU is much the same as it was a week or two ago.
“And that gives us confidence that the vaccine wall is holding but gives us no reason to be complacent at all. So we have to continue with the vaccine programme. The booster shots for the over 60s in particular and health care workers.”
Mr Varadkar said cases will begin to fall in the coming weeks, with things getting closer to normal after the winter period. However, he warned that the following winter could see outbreaks return.
“I’d be confident that we will get through the winter and we’ll be in a much better place again in spring and summer,” he said.
“But of course next winter, this virus, which is now endemic, could reappear again.
Opened a new start up space in @GMITOfficial today. A real boost for current and future entrepreneurs in the area. Met some really exciting businesses, developing new technologies & creating jobs at home and abroad. pic.twitter.com/tjVkLVW7uN
— Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) November 5, 2021
“And at that point, if vaccine immunity has waned, and natural immunity has waned, you could see outbreaks again. So this is a pandemic, unfortunately, that is not just going to end one day.
“We’ll never be able to declare a mission accomplished. But it will fizzle out. I think if we can get through this winter, spring and summer will be very, very normal, much more like we’re used to before the pandemic started.
“But we can really run into difficulties next winter again. And that’s the nature of respiratory viruses.”
Covid restrictions
Earlier the Tánaiste said the Government does not intend to introduce pandemic restrictions before Christmas but has not ruled out doing so.
A backlog of unverified cases was in part responsible for the significant spike in incidence, which had been around the 3,000 mark in recent days.
“We will see cases hit around 4,000 today or tomorrow. They’ve been heading that way and there’s a backlog of unverified cases,” he said.
But Mr Varadkar said the high case levels were not as much of a concern as they would have been last winter thanks to the vaccination rollout, noting that hospital numbers have remained “pretty stable”.
“It’s telling us that the vaccine wall is working. Infections and cases aren’t turning into hospitalisations to the extent they might,” he told RTE’s Morning Ireland.
The Tánaiste refused to rule out the possibility that fresh restrictions could be imposed, but said the Government doesn’t intend on doing so.
“It would be reckless to do so [rule out restrictions], but I can say that it’s not our intention and we don’t expect to have to reimpose restrictions before Christmas” he said.
Meanwhile, Minister for Further Education Simon Harris has said the Government should not dictate how people socialise in the current phase of the pandemic.
Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan this week suggested that people should only visit nightclubs once every 10 to 14 days.
Here are today’s open walk-in #COVIDVaccine clinics. Walk-in clinics are for first and second dose only. You cannot get a booster dose at a walk-in vaccination clinic.
(1/4) pic.twitter.com/v0bwCqzVmx— HSE Ireland (@HSELive) November 5, 2021
Mr Harris said: “I think it’s not for the Government to stand on a podium and tell young people how to regulate their social lives in a living with Covid phase.
“Students – all people – it’s not an age debate, all people need to use their common sense and their cop on. I think the point that the CMO made is that we know that the virus spreads, in certain environments, it is easier for it to spread.
“Environments where you’re not keeping your distance and you’re not wearing your mask, it’s more likely to spread.”
He said that the objective of living with Covid “can’t just be a slogan” and that Government must make a “genuine effort to keep our country open in a very difficult environment”.
Mr Harris said he was “very confident” that colleges will remain open, despite the high incidence rate. He also thought the Government had been “too slow” to adopt measures such as antigen testing.
“The buck always stops with the Government,” he said.
“I think this country has done a lot of things right, but there are a lot of things we were slow on. When I was Minister for Health, we were too slow on face masks. Way too slow.
“In relation to antigen testing, some sectors have moved faster than others.”
