Ireland ‘does not need’ vaccines from UK

 Vials of AstraZeneca's coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine

Credit: Reuters

Ireland will not need excess UK vaccines as a pledged ramp up in EU deliveries will enable the country to meet its inoculation targets, political sources have said.

Like many EU member states, the vaccination roll-out has ground to a halt as a supply crunch across the bloc has choked deliveries to Ireland.

Ireland had the second highest rate of vaccinations per capita in the EU up to the end of last week as official figures show that 3 per cent of the population have been inoculated – 77,000 frontline health workers and 66,000 residents of elderly care facilities.

Dublin had been heavily reliant on the AstraZeneca vaccine to meet its target of fully vaccinating 700,000 people by the end of March.

Last week it emerged that Ireland would receive 300,000 AstraZeneca jabs compared to an original pledge of 600,000 doses.

Last night however, following negotiations between Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, and AstraZeneca, Ireland will receive an extra 100,000 doses of the vaccine.

The government has lowered its target to vaccinating 600,000 people by the end of the first quarter, although following the announcement by Pfizer that it will deliver an extra 75 million jabs to the EU in the second quarter, Irish officials are confident that they will meet the overall target of inoculating 70 per cent of the adult population by September.

The view in Irish government circles is that by the time the UK has reached herd immunity, Ireland should have access to more than enough doses through the EU program to meet vaccination capacity.

Ireland has access to 1 per cent of the Commission’s portfolio of 2.3 billion vaccines, which is enough to cover the population twice.

Even though there has been a lot of criticism in Ireland of the EU Commission’s procurement policy, which was seen as overly bureaucratic, privately political sources have said that if it had been a free-for-all among member states, the country would have been in a much worse position.