James Cox
A Dublin pharmacist says young people registering with multiple pharmacies for their Covid-19 vaccine is causing delays in the rollout.
Many 18 to 34-year-olds are putting their name on several waiting lists in the hope of getting a jab sooner.
Eighty thousand doses have been given in pharmacies nationwide since they joined the programme two weeks ago.
Grainne O’Leary of Gallery Quay and Hannover Quay pharmacies in Dublin says they received thousands of emails and calls.
Ms O'Leary told Newstalk: “It's consuming all our man power and resources, we made a list the other day of 120 emails we went through, and we offered them vaccines. We got 25 responses, we had to go through all those emails, send out appointment offers, then we had to wait for them to come back, ironically it's putting loads of effort in, but it's slowing down the whole process of people being vaccinated.”
Testing
A further 1,377 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in the Republic of Ireland with the positivity rate now at 8.4 per cent amid “very high levels” of testing, while the State is also reporting its highest five-day average of Covid-19 cases since the middle of February.
There are 78 coronavirus patients in Irish hospitals, with 22 in intensive care.
The last time the positivity rate, which is the percentage of all coronavirus tests performed that return positive results, was above 8 per cent was on January 27th this year.
Paul Reid, chief executive of the HSE, said more than 5.1 million vaccines have now been administered to residents of the Republic, with 63 per cent of adults fully vaccinated and 76 per cent partially.
