By Vivienne Clarke
Immunologist Professor Luke O’Neill has said that nursing homes could have a Covid-19 vaccine before Christmas.
While this could be an ambitious outlook, he said, certainly by early next year the older population and vulnerable groups would be among the first to be vaccinated.
Speaking to Newstalk’s Pat Kenny, Prof O’Neill said that when the data from Pfizer's vaccine was shared in a scientific report it would take another three to four weeks for the vaccine to become a reality.
Healthcare workers and nursing home residents would be first in line for a vaccine. “It goes to healthcare workers first because they are on the frontline obviously. They are the ones at risk of getting infected. Then secondly the vulnerable – that means older people.
Medical shield
“You could see a situation where every nursing home now will have the vaccine available to it, maybe just before Christmas. That seems a bit ambitious, but certainly early next year we will see the older population being vaccinated and the vulnerable groups, the ones who have got other diseases," he said.
The vaccine was effectively providing a medical shield to the vulnerable, he said.
The Pfizer result was also positive for other vaccines in development which meant there was a chance that the world could get back to normal by next Spring.
Prof O’Neill predicted that there would be announcements about two more vaccines before Christmas from AstraZeneca and Moderna.
“That means supply won’t be an issue because they can all roll out billions of doses as we move into 2021 and secondly, Pfizer had already mobilised an army to prepare 1.4 billion doses of this vaccine so they are ramping up production massively.”
