Health officials are set to announce further recommendations on Ireland’s response to Covid-19 as the emergency stage of the pandemic draws to a close.
Public Health Officials have said the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac) will give its recommendation on booster vaccinations for teenagers this month.
The news comes as NPHET said it is ‘broadly’ satisfied with the current level of protection against Covid in Ireland.
Speaking at a meeting of the Oireachtas Health Committee on Wednesday, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Ronan Glynn, the demand for booster vaccines has fallen after the rush for jabs over the run-up to Christmas.
He said: “There are a variety of reasons for that. We think that if you take the proportion of people who have been boosted and then the proportion of people who can’t be boosted because they’ve been recently infected… we estimate that about 80 per cent of all those eligible to be boosted have been boosted.”
He added: “That compares very favourably internationally, but again there is a proportion of people out there who haven’t taken the opportunity to [get boosted].”
Dr Glynn said Niac’s recommendation on whether or not those aged 12 to 15 will get the booster will be given soon.
He said: “There’s a lot to weigh up there, so we’ll wait to hear back from them. I think we would expect something certainly in the next two to three weeks. I think, we’d expect a recommendation from them either way on this.”
Dr Glynn also said the requirement of mask-wearing for primary schools is currently under review, and health officials will make a recommendation later this month.
However, Professor Philip Nolan said recent data tracking infection rates saw figures on the more pessimistic end of modelling figures.
He said: “The vaccines didn’t hold up a lot of protection against getting infected with Omicron. But the vaccines exceeded expectations in terms of the their protection against severely ill and requiring clinical care.”
Adding: “The most important thing was in terms of critical care admissions, and we were well ahead of the optimistic [scenario]. It was a critical step when Omicron was coming that the decision was made to accelerate the booster programme.”
Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said NPHET would continue to work on a long term plan for Covid as the emergency stage of the pandemic comes to an end.
“We don’t anticipate that we’re going to be advising the need to test every individual, irrespective of the severity of the symptoms, and irrespective of how vulnerable they, individually, might be to the disease itself,” he said.
