The AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, temporarily suspended due to health concerns, accounts for more than a quarter of doses delivered to the State, new figures show.
Department of Health statistics on Covid-19 vaccine deliveries show that the AstraZeneca jab comprised 206,400 doses of the 758,490 delivered to the middle of March since vaccinations began.
The latest statistics show the State’s continued reliance on the British-Swedish drug manufacturer for the supply of vaccines to the inoculation programme against Covid-19.
Ireland has joined a handful of other countries, including Germany, France and Italy, in temporarily suspending the AstraZeneca vaccine following a small number of reports of serious blood clots in people under the age of 50 who had received the jab in Norway.
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The vaccine is one of four authorised for use in the State by the European Medicines Agency, though only three have been administered so far: the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna jabs.
The single-dose Johnson & Johnson, or Janssen jab, was authorised earlier this month but the State is not expected to receive any supplies of the vaccine until the summer.
The Pfizer vaccine, the one currently being administered to people aged 70 and over in the third group in the vaccination programme, accounts for the highest number delivered.
Just over two-thirds of the vaccines delivered since the vaccine programme began at the end of last year have been Pfizer vaccines, accounting for 511,290 of the 758,490 doses.
The State has received 40,800 vaccine doses from Moderna, making up just 5 per cent of vaccines delivered. No deliveries of the vaccine have been received since February.
As of March 14th, just over 617,000 doses of vaccine have administered. About 95 per cent of available vaccines are administered within seven days of arrival, the department said.
Strategy
Vaccinations of the next priority group, people aged between 16 and 69 with serious underlying health conditions and at high risk of severe illness from Covid-19, has been postponed because of the suspension of the AstraZeneca jab.
The EMA is due to make a decision on the safety of the vaccine on Thursday.
The Department of Health said that the State’s vaccination strategy is “to distribute all available vaccines as quickly as is operationally possible, prioritising those who are most vulnerable to Covid-19.”
A buffer of doses must be held back for second doses. The second doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are administered 28 days after the first.
The manufacturer of the Moderna vaccine asked that 50 per cent is retained for second doses.
Some 452,554 first doses of the three authorised vaccine have been administered to people in the State and, of those, 164,496 have received their second doses and are fully vaccinated.
Some 12 per cent of the population have received a first dose of a vaccine, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control’s Covid-19 vaccine tracker.
Ireland's first-dose vaccination rate is ahead of the EU/EEA average of 9.8 per cent but lags Malta (18.3 per cent), Hungary (16.6 per cent), Estonia (12.9 per cent) and Denmark (12.5 per cent) in the region. The UK has administered first doses to 36 per cent of its population.
