Delta wave is ‘likely to outpace vaccine drive’
THE growth of the Delta variant in Ireland will ‘outmatch’ the supply of vaccines coming into the country, HSE chief Paul Reid has said.
It comes as a number of people in the mid-west who were fully vaccinated have tested positive for Covid-19.
At a HSE briefing yesterday, Mr Reid said: ‘There’s no doubt that we are actually in a very real race to get the vaccines out ahead of the potential increase in spread of the Delta variant. Our most likely scenario is that the pace of growth of the Delta variant will most likely outmatch our supply of vaccines over the coming weeks.’
Mr Reid said the Department of Health wished it had more time and supplies to get ahead of the swelling Delta wave, but that for now all the other lines of defence, such as the public health measures, are needed along with vaccines. ‘There will be rising cases and rising variant – a rise in Delta cases, with potentially rising hospitalisations. So we won’t have people vaccinated; there’s a gap there, there’s an exposure there, and people need to treat it with caution,’ he said. Mr Reid said community testing levels are high at the moment and that on two days this week they reached levels seen on January 11 during the third wave of the virus.
He said 4.6% of those tested have Covid, compared to levels of up to 50% in some centres in January. The current highest level is 11% at a test centre in Donegal, Mr Reid added.
As of Wednesday, there were 4.55million doses of vaccine administered, with over 2million people now fully vaccinated.
The HSE stated that it is on track to administer 300,000 vaccines this week and 280,000 next week.
The Department of Health confirmed 534 new cases of Covid-19 yesterday, prompting Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan to remind people that the virus is still circulating in the community as we head into the weekend. The HSE’s chief clinical officer, Dr Colm Henry, said the highly transmissible Delta variant now accounts for 70% of cases here, making it the dominant strain. ‘We expect that, as the European Centre for Disease [Prevention and] Control predicts, it is going to get higher,’ he said. Some 70% of adults here have had their first dose and 53% are fully inoculated. As of yesterday morning, there were 58 patients in hospital with Covid-19, However, the number in ICU remains ‘relatively low’ at 17, Mr Reid said.
Health officials in the mid-west, meanwhile, have warned those who are vaccinated to keep their guard up after a number of inoculated people locally tested positive for Covid in recent weeks.
In a statement, the Department of Public Health Mid-West urged members of the public to continue following public health guidelines after they have received their second vaccine doses as they could still pick up and pass on the virus.
‘As part of the contact-tracing process in recent weeks, we have identified a number of new Covid19 cases who were fully vaccinated. In a small number of these cases, patients had presented with symptoms of Covid-19,’ a department spokesperson said.