PEOPLE AGED 40-49 will be able to get their Covid-19 booster vaccine from tomorrow if they have already received their first two vaccinations. 

“We encourage everyone to avail of your booster dose when offered as it gives you the best protection from serious illness caused by Covid-19,” the HSE said in a statement. 

Those who are due a booster can attend a designated walk-in vaccination clinic for their age group, or they will get a text message from the HSE with a scheduled appointment. 

You can find details of times and locations of walk-in centres here.

The HSE said on Thursday that this age group would be invited to get their boosters from  27 December, which was already three weeks ahead of schedule. 

“I am urging all those eligible for their Covid booster vaccine to avail of it. We want the protection provided by the booster to be as robust as possible over the winter months,” said Dr Colm Henry, Chief Clinical Officer at the HSE.

He added: “We have multiple channels to access a Covid-19 vaccine and I am making a public call to those who remain unvaccinated to take this opportunity as soon as possible in order to ensure they are protected from serious illness from Covid-19.”

HSE chief executive Paul Reid Tweeted this morning that there have been more than 1.46M booster third dose vaccines administered in the country already. 

There are now over 1.46M booster & 3rd dose vaccines administered. Yesterday, over 55,000 people received a vaccine. Almost 250,000 vaccines administered from Monday to Friday, this week. A great response once again from the Irish public to strengthen our protection. @HSELive

— Paul Reid (@paulreiddublin) December 18, 2021

What do you need to do? 

When attending your appointment, you need to bring photo ID with you, which can be a passport, driver’s licence, garda age card, student/school ID etc. If your ID doesn’t include proof of your date of birth, you will need to bring something that does, e.g. your birth cert.

Healthcare workers attending a walk-in clinic will need to bring evidence of their place of work. 

People aged 40-49 will be offered a single dose of an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna). These are effective even your first course of innoculations was with a different type of vaccine, eg. AstraZeneca, Janssen, Pfizer or Moderna.

The booster dose should be given at a minimum of a three-month interval from a person’s last dose of a primary Covid-19 vaccine. This will be checked at the vaccination centre.

Anyone who had the single-dose Janssen vaccine and is in an eligible age group or risk group for a booster Covid-19 vaccine at the moment will need to wait at least three months before getting their booster COVID-19 dose.

Anyone who has had Covid-19 since they were vaccinated should get their booster dose at least six months after their positive test result. 

Those 50 years and over will be also be accommodated at walk-in clinics.

As part of the booster vaccine programme, the HSE will continue to issue scheduled appointments for eligible groups to attend vaccination centres, via text. 

If you want to cancel your appointment, reply to your appointment text with the word ‘REJECT.’

If you can’t attend your appointment, you can ask for a new one by replying to the text with the word ‘NEW’.

You can also change to a different vaccination centre by filling in the vaccination centre change form, or calling HSELive on 1800 700 700.