Irish people could expect the most awaited Covid-19 vaccine by January, said Health Minister Stephen Donnelly.
Ireland has an agreed contract with the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccinations and their market authorisation will be achieved in the coming weeks.
Stephen Donnelly on Sunday said: “Potentially early in the new year we could be looking at things and Professor Brian McCraith (chairman of vaccine taskforce) and his team are obviously very quickly putting in place the distribution needed for that”.
“It’s very heartwarming because if we go back even a few months, the experts were saying that it would be mid next year or potentially the end of next year, or indeed in three or four years time before we might see these things so it really has been very heartwarming.” He added.
He also said that Ireland is currently signed up to four of the vaccines.
“So Ireland is certainly very much playing our part and making sure where we’re involved we have advanced purchase of these vaccines and for various of the other ones we have advanced purchase of several million doses so it’s looking good.” Stephen Donnelly said.
He also added that at present Ireland has no plans to introduced legislation on mandatory vaccination, while certain other EU countries have gone with it.
“There has been no conversation at a government level about doing that, my strong preference with that is, is that it would be voluntary,” he added.
Around 74% of people are in favour of taking the vaccine.
Mr Donnelly added that “We’ve just rolled out the biggest flu vaccination programme in the history of the state and indeed, if we could get our hands on more flu vaccine people, people are looking to take it and there’s also been a very strong uptake in the HPV vaccine.”
“There is this anti-Vax movement, a lot of what I’ve seen is misinformation and I think it’s very dangerous, but I think the vast majority of people see that for what it is and I think people are well disposed to taking the vaccine when it comes out.” He said.