LAST UPDATE | 8 Jul 2021

THE DELTA VARIANT is to “outmatch” Ireland’s supply of Covid-19 vaccines in July, the HSE said at a briefing today.

HSE chief Paul Reid said that vaccine supplies would drop slightly in July, while cases of the virus will likely increase in the coming weeks, mainly due to the Delta variant.

“We won’t have all people vaccinated, there’ll be a gap there,” he told a HSE briefing today.

However, he added that Ireland is in “a much stronger position” than we were in January thanks to the success of the vaccination rollout.

He said the public should take some reassurance from that, but caution is still needed.

There are 352 confirmed cases of the Delta variant in Ireland; analysis estimates that about 70% of cases here are now of the Delta variant.

Testing and tracing is under increasing pressure, and is at the highest levels since January, however the level of positivity is lower now (4.6% nationally).

It was also revealed at today’s briefing that around 11,000 people aged over 50 have gone to pharmacies to get a Janssen Covid-19 vaccine – these are people who didn’t previously register through the HSE portal.

Dr Colm Henry says vaccine programme is working; Ireland has high uptake rate

14-day incidence rate as of 6 July: 121 per 100k; on 17 January was 1,492 per 100k of population pic.twitter.com/M8H8FbYpPv

— Órla Ryan (@orlaryan) July 8, 2021

Two million people vaccinated

As of Wednesday, a total of 4,555,032 vaccine doses had been administered in Ireland – 70% of adults have received at least one jab and over two million people (52%) are fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin revealed earlier today that the milestone had been passed in a tweet this morning.

“Brilliant effort by all the HSE staff and volunteers involved in our rollout,” Martin said.

The figures report that a total of 1,992,827 people are fully vaccinated after receiving either two doses of Pfizer, AstraZeneca or Moderna or the one-dose Janssen jab.

The total doses administered by type is as follows:

• Pfizer – 3 million (65.9%)
• AstraZeneca – 1.07 million (23.4%)
• Moderna – 413,000 (9.1%)
• Janssen – 72,000 (1.6%)

The HSE’s vaccine portal is currently allowing people aged 30-34 to register for mRNA (Pfizer and Moderna) jabs.

People aged 18-34 can also receive the single-dose Janssen vaccine from a pharmacy, subject to supply.

Starting from next Monday, people in this age bracket will be able to register for AstraZeneca or Janssen shots through the vaccine portal.

Registration for mRNA vaccines for 18- to 29-year-olds will open at a later date, and if someone receives a Janssen or AstraZeneca jab before that, they will not receive an mRNA vaccine when it becomes available.

Yesterday, public health officials announced 581 new cases of Covid-19 in Ireland. The latest figures show that a total of 60 people are in hospital with the illness, and 17 are in intensive care units.

581 was the highest daily number of new cases confirmed in over two months.

With reporting from Órla Ryan