Over 16s Eligible For Booster Shot At Vaccination Centres From Sunday

Friday, 31 December 2021 17:42

The Health Minister has announced an acceleration of our vaccination programme.

The Minister for Health has announced an acceleration of Ireland’s COVID-19 vaccination programme.

From Sunday, 2 January, all of those aged 16 and older who are eligible to receive a booster vaccine can access this service through HSE vaccination centres. GPs and community pharmacies will also be providing this service, on an appointment basis.

Minister Stephen Donnelly said: “In order to maintain momentum and build on the additional capacity put in place by the HSE over the last month within our vaccination centres and in primary care, I am delighted to announce that booster vaccination will now be available for all remaining age groups earlier than scheduled, beginning from Sunday next.”

Vaccination centres will commence appointment-based clinics for those aged under 30 years in designated centres.

Initial appointments will be available for booking from later this evening, Friday 31 December.

Additional centres will be offering this service over the coming week.

GPs will continue to vaccinate down through the age groups, by appointment.

Pharmacies will continue to vaccinate people by appointment.

Minister Donnelly added: “This acceleration of the programmes means that many of our vaccination centres will now be administering primary, booster and paediatric doses of COVID-19 vaccine. The logistics of this undertaking are not to be underestimated and I would like to thank all those in the Department of Health, the HSE, the vaccination centres, our GPs and pharmacies as well as everyone involved in the logistics for their continued efforts. Further clinics will be scheduled over the coming days. Appointments will be booked through the HSEs online system.

“Ireland has the second highest uptake for booster/third dose vaccination in the EU (adult population). This has been an enormous national effort and the public and our healthcare staff should be hugely proud of this achievement.”

As of December 31, a total of 2.035m additional/booster COVID-19 vaccines have been administered since this programme began, with 130,000 doses administered so far this week.

Yesterday, (Thursday) 58,000 vaccines were administered.

So far this week, over 6,400 people have also presented for their first vaccine dose or second vaccine dose.