AstraZeneca are like a dodgy car dealership you get suckered into buying a car from.
Never ending issues.
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A bit like Britain.
This surely simplifies things for the thick bastards in the HSE. Horse the AZ into over 60s and anyone at risk under 60 who is currently close to being vaxxed gets Pfizer or Moderna. It’s not fuckin rocket science to be fair.
It’s hardly going to leave us short vaccines?? @Copper_pipe
We’re still gonna get the same amount of vaccines. However, they’ll be a bit of chopping and changing to the rollout plan I’d say.
As of now I reckon about 355k doses of AZ have arrived into the country and as of Saturday they had used 233710 so there’s about 121-122k doses in fridges ready to be given out to those over 60.
AZ accounts for 1 in every 5 vaccines into the country. It’s definitely an inconvenience but I think people are over reacting a small bit. Multiple EU countries are facing the same issue, it’s not unique to Ireland.
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How come the brits are ok with astra zeneca then?
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A lovely handy excuse for targets not being met this week.
It boggles the mind that they would look at this miniscule blood clot risk and say “okay, let’s give our least effective vaccine only to those at most risk, thereby pushing our supply of the most effective vaccines down the ladder to those who don’t need as much protection”.
It’s so disproportionate and irrational, but sure what’s new?
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Brenda on Facebook won’t take the AZ, so that’s that
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All the vaccines will be stopped in Ireland before there’s a chance for us to have a normal summer. They’ll be gunning for zero covid now for the next few months.
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I’m fairly sure they’ve stopped giving it to young people too
Yeah the cut off is 30 in the UK.
That’s presumably because everyone older than that has been vaccinated at this stage.
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I’m supposed to be getting it tomorrow 
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You’d think, wouldn’t you?
Glynn was asked about the vaccine rollout impact at the press conference there (cc @mickee321) and he said it would become apparent in a few weeks. He said a complicated piece of work would need to be carried out and the HSE would be commencing it now.
The lack of scenario planning, again, is mind boggling. This NIAC meeting to review AZ was flagged since last week and even George Lee was speculating in sombre tones late last week on what may happen.
You’d think Philip Nolan’s modelling team would have been tweaking their excel spreadsheet over the past few days. Changing some assumptions, reducing AZ by a bit for that cohort, increasing it by a bit for another one, running some macros and so on. You’d think they’d almost be able to plot the NIAC decision into the model and see the impact straight away.
This is all very basic stuff. Anybody in any kind of semi-competent work environment would be expected to have a report on the practical implications finalised on a next day basis.
For the HSE, in a pandemic, it’ll become clear in a few weeks.
I’m apoplectic.
EDIT: I guess what I’m saying is, how can they make a decision like this in isolation BEFORE they know the impact on the wider rollout? Like, vaccination clinics for tomorrow have been cancelled now so it’s already affecting targets. Someone that was scheduled to be vaccinated tomorrow might now come in contact with a very, very serious variant and we could all die. There’s no joined up thinking. They’re making decisions without having basic information to hand.
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Exactly. They didn’t arrive at 30 for medical reasons. It was the only number realistically left to them.
I can see the HSE and govt coming under huge pressure now. The EU have finally cranked up their rollout last week and Ireland have been left massively behind.
All along we said the decisions of NPHET, which is effectively the HSE, were taken with primary motivation being to limit any risk to decision makers and to avoid at all costs any logistics of HSE being challenged.
It’s clear now why they didn’t trust themselves or their systems.
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The backlash is going to be big the next few weeks as they fall behind the rest of the EU.
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