HSE says it was not deliberate for health workers not to receive the flu vaccine

HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid said it was not intentional not to make the flu vaccine available to health workers despite the COVID threat. He added that as part of HSE’s winter plan, it aims to make the flu vaccine available to 75% of health workers, up from 60% last year.

Meanwhile, HSE chief clinical officer Dr. Colm Henry said it was not clear why the flu vaccine was not readily available this year, despite the existence of the COVID epidemic.

Mr. Reid warned that the winter that had never been experienced before is about to come in this COVID context.

At the same time, COVID spread is having huge repercussions on the health sector. Three wards at the hospital in Beaumont were closed following the virus aggravation. The COVID ward at Mater Hospital was also filled.

Reid said 1.1 million COVID tests have been conducted in Ireland so far and 90,000 tests were conducted last week alone.

The maximum time taken for testing and contact tracing is 2 days. So far, 1,68,000 tests have been carried out in nursing homes.

Of the 19,000 experiments conducted on meat processing units, 0.3% were positive. Of the 2,500 tests conducted directly at provision centers, the positive rate was 0.28%.

The COVID tracker app has been downloaded by 1.3 million people in Ireland as the pandemic continues to languish. Reid said it helped find more than 2,000 people on the contact list.

At the same time, the average number of close contacts in each positive case still remains at six. He also noted that the response rate from contacts has improved.