Following a new safety alert received late on 13th March from Norway, and pending receipt of further information from the European Medicines Agency, on the precautionary principle the National Immunisation Advisory Committee has recommended a temporary deferral of the administration of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca® in Ireland for the week commencing the 14th March 2021 (Sunday).

It is important to note that it has NOT been concluded that there is any link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and the reported cases – this is a precautionary measure.

Mary welcomes the approval of the J&J vaccine by the European Medical Agency. This vaccine should account for 15% of the total vaccine doses in Ireland over April, May & June.

The latest figures up to March 12th show that 606,904 people have received the vaccine in Ireland.

Ireland has contracts in place for more than 18 million vaccine doses, sufficient to fully vaccinate 10 million people, subject to regulatory approvals and manufacturers’ delivery commitments being achieved. The Department of Health continues to be fully engaged with the EU and our partners to ensure the equitable and timely supply of vaccines available to the EU.

At the moment, vaccine administration is limited only by the supply of approved vaccines and that is dependent on manufacturers meeting their supply commitments. Ireland is committed to the European Commission’s Advance Purchase Agreement process and is consistently ordering its full pro-rata allocation of vaccines available. Ireland has also purchased vaccines via all additional options in the EU process. You can read more about this here.

The Department of Health issued a statement on the supply of COVID-19 vaccine on March 10th – you can read the detail of it here.