By Michelle Devane, PA
Thousands of family members of Pfizer Ireland employees will be offered the Covid-19 vaccine by the company in the coming months, it has been confirmed.
The vaccine manufacturer said the family of Pfizer staff will be offered the vaccine over the coming months in line with the Government’s age-based approach.
Pfizer’s more than 4,000 staff across its five locations in Ireland were informed of the company’s offer on Wednesday.
The company said its decision will not affect the supplies set to be delivered by the manufacturer to the State’s vaccination programme in the coming months.
The latest figures from the HSE show that Pfizer provided more than 1 million of the almost 1.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine supplied to Ireland up to April 16th.
The rollout is set to begin with “immediate family/household members” over the age of 60 from next month.
The rest of the staff’s family/household members will be vaccinated over the coming months.
All of the costs will be covered by Pfizer.
A spokeswoman for the company said: “Family of Pfizer colleagues will be offered the vaccine over the coming months.
“At the moment we are currently planning this phase of the programme with regard to the prioritisation groupings of the national vaccination programme and will start with immediate family/household members over age 60 initially (from mid next month onward) and then progress to include other age categories at a later stage.
“This will be run independently by Pfizer and the vaccine doses used in this programme are separate to the supply provided to the government.”
“All costs associated with it are covered by the company,” she added.
Earlier this year, the medicines company vaccinated staff who were deemed essential to the supply of its coronavirus vaccine.
It has since been extended to non-essential workers.
