The head of the Covid-19 vaccination taskforce says 89 per cent of over-16s are now fully vaccinated.
The Government set a 90 per cent over-16s target as a key milestone before further pandemic restrictions can be lifted next month.
More than 30 walk-in clinics will be available this weekend, to anybody over the age of 12 who has yet to receive their first or second dose.
Yesterday, the vaccination programme administered its 7 millionth dose, and saw 90 per cent of adults reach fully vaccinated status.
Professor Brian McCraith, chair of the High-Level Taskforce on Vaccination, says the programme is making huge progress.
Prof McCraith said: “A third major metric that we're pleased with is over 89 per cent over the age of 16 are fully vaccinated, you will recall that the Government has set its threshold for having 90 per cent of those over 16 fully vaccinated. We're just one per cent away from that at the moment.”
The Department of Health confirmed 1,620 new cases of Covid-19 as of midnight on Thursday.
At 8am on Friday there were 328 people with the virus in hospital, 59 of whom were in ICU.
Friday's overall hospitalisation figures are down 25 on last Friday, however the number in intensive care has increased by four in the past week.
The downward trend in hospital admission was also noted in figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) which found hospitalisations fell by over a third
