The vaccination programme targeting the medically vulnerable, which was paused due to concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine, got under way on Sunday morning at the mass vaccination centre at Galway Racecourse.
It is one of 37 such facilities throughout the country and one of five centres in the west and north-west. The others are based in Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, and Donegal.
More than 80,000 vaccination doses have been administered to adults in Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Donegal, Sligo, and Leitrim since the campaign began.
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In addition, GPs are giving vaccines to the over 70 age group. When that process is complete, the numbers of people receiving the Covid-19 jab in doctors' surgeries will be added to the overall figure. A total of 668,000 vaccine doses have been administered throughout the country so far.
The patient group currently being vaccinated in the six counties covered by the western and north-western centres, are aged 16 to 69 and have underlying medical conditions which put them at particular risk if they contract Covid-19. They were moved up the vaccine priority list from the seventh to the fourth cohort group by the Government at the end of February.
They include people with cancer, chronic kidney or chronic respiratory disease, diabetes, are immuno-compromised, have an inherited metabolic disease, have an intellectual disability, are obese, or have sickle cell disease.
Numbers
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"We expected 17,000 medically vulnerable people to come into that category [in the west and north-west]", says Tony Canavan, the chief executive of the Saolta University Health Care Group. It runs the five public hospitals in Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, and Donegal and also has overall responsibility for the vaccination programme in the west and north-west.
“But that number is now down to 14,000. A lot of people when we contacted them said they had already got the vaccine because they were over 70. Some refused it, but that was a small number. We started vaccinating again [after the temporary suspension of the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine] on Sunday.”
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“Our aim was to get the five big vaccination centres up and running and that has only been achieved now. Mayo and Roscommon [centres] were due to open on Monday 15th but because of AstraZeneca being suspended we could not open them. They opened yesterday [Monday] so now our five centres are open. We’re the first region to be complete, our aim is to have our noses out front.
“The aim was, across all the centres in the country, to administer 250,000 doses weekly by May and a million in May and June. That would increase to two million in July and August. From our perspective, we are on target.”
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Tony Canavan, chief executive of the Saolta University Health Care Group.
The vaccination centre at the Galway Racecourse has 40 vaccination booths, half of which are currently in use. The vaccinators are nurses, doctors, and physiotherapists, but mostly nurses (the centre is still recruiting vaccinators ). The staff work 12 hour days.
Staff
“They are not working a full week yet,” says Mr Canavan. “They tend to work long hours over three days and these are different days each week. It depends on when the vaccine is available.
“To run our five centres at full pace [this is expected to happen in May] we need 800 to 900 staff (the Racecourse Centre requires 300 staff ). The biggest single group of these, about half, would be vaccinators.” To give an idea of the staff numbers involved in the vaccine rollout, he says Roscommon Hospital has 400 staff and Portiuncula University Hospital in Ballinasloe has 800. The vaccine staff complement “is equivalent to the staffing of a hospital”.
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“There is a variety of different staff. The biggest group would be the vaccinators, the second biggest would be the administration staff, they have a huge task in identifying, registering, and recording [people’s details].”
The Saolta boss says the administration of the Covid-19 vaccine is limited only by the supply. One thousand vaccines can be administered daily in Ballybrit. “The pace we are vaccinating at is dictated by the amount of the vaccine which is available.”
Adapting
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However, the journey is not all smooth. Setbacks, such as the delay because of the recent suspension of the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, means plans have to be changed suddenly.
“We are very excited about the vaccination programme and with the progress being made. If you take the AstraZeneca episode, we were trying to motivate and get people going and then we had to stop. It’s a difficult task. It is not just a question of getting up and running and let roll.
“The lesson for us: it’s our ability to adapt to problems that arise, how you respond to setbacks is the real key, how you take the hits. Our ability as a group to adapt to these problems as they arise will get us out the other side of the vaccine.”
