The vaccination of special school staff out of sequence this week should not have happened but was not comparable to workers at a private school receiving jabs at the Beacon Hospital, Health Service Executive chief executive Paul Reid has said.
Staff in special schools in the Dublin and Wicklow area were among 191 people who were called from a reserve list to the Aviva Stadium to be vaccinated on Tuesday in order to "avoid wastage".
They were vaccinated in the belief that they were a category of frontline health worker, on the basis that they worked with many high-risk children with disabilities in residential settings.
Mr Reid said he wished to apologise about the episode, which he said was not comparable to staff at the private St Gerard's School in Bray being vaccinated following a call from Beacon Hospital chief executive Michael Cullen, whose children attend the school.
Process oversights
“It is important that we don’t overtly demonise people,” Mr Reid told a HSE media briefing on Covid-19. “It is also important that we don’t celebrate where people have in a systemic way breached the system.”
Former HSE assistant national director Cornelia Stuart, now an independent patient safety consultant, has been appointed to investigate the Beacon Hospital vaccine incident. The hospital was removed as a vaccination centre after the details emerged.
Mr Reid said Ms Stuart would investigate how vaccinations were administered at the Beacon and the oversights involved in the process. He expected Ms Stuart to complete a report in a matter of weeks.
He said there also appeared to be a breach of sequencing at the Mater hospital, which has said that non-medical board members were offered vaccines and some accepted them. This included board chair David Begg, who said that he regularly visited the hospital as part of his role.
Vaccination numbers
The HSE briefing heard that, to date, 245,000 healthcare staff have been vaccinated – 146,000 of whom work directly for the HSE.
Mr Reid said he anticipates between 180,000 and 190,000 vaccinations will be administered next week to over-70s and people with long-term health conditions.
He said a target of 250,000 vaccinations a week would not be reached until the end of April to the start of May. He said supplies could be “bumpy” for the month of April.
Mr Reid also said he expected the 11,500 vaccinators to be sufficient for the increased volumes of vaccine due this month and over the coming months.
The positivity rate in childcare facilities peaked at 11 per cent early in March and fell to 5.1 per cent in week 13.
