(The HSE's Paul Reid. RollingNews.ie photo)
New walk-in clinics in operation in the Republic of Ireland have been deemed a “huge success” after 18,000 people were vaccinated last weekend.
The news comes as health authorities plan to vaccinate children in the 12-15 age group.
The Health Service Executive (HSE) has administered 2.1 million doses of vaccines over the past six weeks.
Chief Executive of the HSE, Paul Reid, said this contrasts with just one million doses in the first 12 weeks of the vaccination campaign.
Speaking about the 12-15 age groups, Mr. Reid said there are about 280,000 young people in that bracket.
He said it was the HSE's intention to work through the process as quickly as possible through August before schools return with the second vaccination in September.
“Young people have played such a key role in a very changing Ireland over the last number of years and I think this weekend is another one of those moments,” he said.
He added that the 280,000 children would be vaccinated at a variety of locations including, general practitioners, pharmacies and vaccination centers throughout the country.
Mr. Reid told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that he was concerned about the “slow rising numbers” of Covid patients in hospital.
“Four weeks ago that was 39 people in hospital, it is now 171. Thankfully we are beginning to see the daily case numbers kind of hold or plateau, but we have seen that steady rise in hospitalizations which continues to cause concern for us.”
He added: “We haven’t seen a significant change in the age range with the Delta variant of hospitalizations. If we take a very quick snapshot of ICUs, which we did over the weekend, we have 26 people in ICU this morning, 22 of those would be in the age bracket of fifty-plus and four would be in the age brackets of 19-30, so we are seeing young people being hospitalized. I think that is an important message for everybody.”
In Northern Ireland over the weekend 13 deaths were reported which were linked to Covid-19.
