Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly
This afternoon.
The Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said the first Covid-19 vaccines will be adminstered on December 30.
Via RTÉ News:
Minister Donnelly said frontline healthcare workers and nursing homes will be vaccinated first and we can “then have a different conversation about opening up”.
Cabinet were told today that around 10,000 batches of the Pfizer/BioNTech will arrive after Christmas.
the roll out of these will begin next week to the most vulnerable and that they would build safely and swiftly from there.
After you.
Thank you, but gentlemen first.
No, I insist.
Etc.
First vaccinations to be administered here on 30 December (RTÉ)
Hook it up to my veins!
In me eyyyyyeeeezzzz
Why would you waste time and vaccines on people in nursing homes who are going to ……. anyway
At what age do you think we should stop caring about your life?
I wonder what the peer pressure to get “ze jab” is like for healthcare workers.
I mean if you were in your early 20’s with no underlining conditions, you’d be a bit hesitant I’d imagine.
Can they say no? I’m sure they can – right?
But would you want your elderly mother treated by someone who could be carrying the virus? (assuming the vaccine also stops transmission). Maybe “conscientious objectors” would be moved to non-frontline positions.
Yep maybe that’ll work?
Do they know if it stops transmission? I suppose if you don’t have any symptoms and your not sneezing on people – I guess?
Still though, I wonder if it’s kinda mandatory for them?
Covid doesn’t generally cause people to sneeze.
The vaccine has an effectiveness rate of 70-80%
Does not stop you transmitting it. If you were 83 years old would you take it?
83 – yup totally. I’d take it now at the grand old age of 42 sure.
If I was in my 20’s and still planning to have kids… maybe not
The people who made the vaccine say the science shows that it will stop transmission but they are waiting for more data before confirming.
Just the Astra Zenica one – who have said that they have ”signs’ of reduced transmission”.
So they haven’t said outright that it will stop the transmission. The other ‘people who made’ vaccinations make no such claims.
Answered below.
@johnnythree: What’s your evidence for saying it won’t stop transmission?
My sister in law works in a care home and can’t wait to have it done. She said she’ll feel much more secure doing her job knowing she’s been vaccinated and less likely to pass on the virus to her vulnerable patients.
She had to live away from her two kids while covid ran through the care home and a number of her patients died while the virus ran it’s course through the home.
My sister is a nurse in a respiratory ward in a Dublin hospital. She’s avoiding everyone this Christmas and she’ll be front of the queue.
Not so sure on the ‘less likely to pass on the virus’ Millie. The only vaccination that has broached that subject in an almost positive way is the Astra Zenica one.
From https://www.wired.com/story/does-the-astrazeneca-vaccine-also-stop-covid-transmission/
“The makers of the two other vaccines in play have reported only evidence that their drugs keep people from getting sick—which is to say, fewer vaccinated people have moderate to severe symptoms and test positive for infection. The vaccines do this very well. But researchers working on the AstraZeneca version said they also had signs of reduced transmission, of people spreading the disease from one person to another.”
I suppose only time will tell, Giggs.
I just know that after seeing a good number of her patients die from Covid this year, she’s incredibly keen to be vaccinated if it means there’s even a small chance of it helping. It took a serious toll on her mental health to see so many patients die this year.
Pfizer expects to report data on whether or not its vaccine stops virus transmission in the first quarter of 2021, Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said on Tuesday at a press briefing held by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations.
They believe it does stop transmission but they are waiting for the data.
This is something that makes me very unhappy, and I really think that developers who are discussing this are speaking out of place.
With the slight bottom covering that I do not have the protocol in front of me this second, I don’t believe that Pfizer, Moderna or Astra will be in a position to state that their vaccines block transmission with the DATA FROM THEIR CURRENT PHASE III trials (sorry for the shouting, but I’m trying to be specific). If I remember correctly, the transmission analysis for each is based on a subset of the total cohort, and I don’t think they are likely to have the numbers to reach statistical significance for that analysis. I’m happy to be corrected if anyone knows better.
The rule at most of the institutions I have worked with (including even pharma companies) is that if you don’t have statistically significant data, you should not make statements regarding impact, and certainly not forecasts.
That said, I do think that we will eventually have insight into tranmsission blocking capability as the number of vaccinees ramps up, if transmission rates remain high overall. Just not necessarily as an output from a Phase III clinical trial, and unlikly in Q1.
I cannot say how much I appreciate your comments, alickdouglas.
+ always interesting and safe to say the only comments I read twice !
Tune into a special edition of the Claire Byrne show where Claire, Ryan Tubridy, Micheal Martin, Stephen Donnelly, Simon Harris compete to be the first one to show how brave he/she is. (Apologies from Leo – unfortunately he can’t attend). Commentary by The Rubber Bandits ( on leave from the Impossible Game Show)
This is not an exercise.
Full strength will be administered by qualified celebrity TD’s live on air, and the winner on the night will be the one who grimaces less during the injecting.
The final will be in 2 months when survivors will gather for a booster shot.
Guest appearances by Bono at various stages during the night.
I’d rather it was an antidote. Thankfully I’m in the penultimate group so plenty of guinea pigs ahead of me
I have no ulterior motive or hidden agenda here, I’m just curious.
Why do people say they wouldn’t get it if they were thinking of having children or of childbearing age etc?
Is there something I haven’t heard/read?
‘ReproTox’ (sorry ReproBertie!) and GenoTox studies are difficult/troublesome/untrustworthy. Ethically it’s extremely troublesome (cough, impossible, cough) to do studies of vaccines in pregnant (human) women if you want to measure potential impact/foetal abnormalities. Some developers do vaccinate non-human primates and monitor the resulting newborns, but numbers are low and won’t reach statistical significance, and NHPs aren’t humans, so the utility of the data is meh. I know plenty of veterinarians who therefore prefer not to do the studies at all. Therefore we have to rely on ‘biological plausibility’ (i.e. is the vaccine doing something that would cause concern). Which to be honest, isn’t that bad a method, especially with modern vaccines such as we have now which have a small enough number of components that we have a hope of figuring out what’s going on. Because of this, most vaccines are issued with an exclusion for pregnant women. So in short, it’s a data-sparse domain, so I can see why people might be nervous.
Because the studies cannot be done then, we are forced to rely on retrospective cohort studies to determine if a vaccine does harm to the foetus/newborn. The minimum amount of time for a signal detection then is 9 months, ideally more like 5 years, and your dataset is based on women who are in theory at least, not vaccinated while pregnant.
So, the actual data on safety in pregnancy for any vaccine is comparatively sparse. However lots of vaccines are given, and lots of women who are/who get pregnant do get vaccinated at least accidentally, and demonstrable foetal impact is (very very) rare. In addition vaccines to date that have been associated with impact on unborn/newborn children is very limited, mainly live attenuated vaccines against rare viruses (usually for lab workers) if memory serves. Mechanistically, you would expect a vaccine only to be capable of causing trouble if it were given in the first trimester of pregnancy.
That said, most technologies are tested on a small scale to ensure that they don’t interact with testis/ovaries (in NHPs), so there is a fair degree of confidence at the outset that there shouldn’t be reprotox issues before going anywhere near the clinic.
ReproTox is my evil twin,
Just to reiterate the gratitude for your posts. It’s nice to have an actual expert willing to take the time to explain all this.
Happy it’s helpful
I’m a frontline healthcare worker (doctor in a large university hospital) and I would get it in my eye if needed.
Sign me up.
It’s been far more rigorously tested than many meds which make it to market. I have no qualms in getting it.