Pfizer boost for vaccine rollout

Ireland will receive over 500,000 additional doses of the BioNtech/Pfizer vaccine over the next three months as part of a wider agreement which will see 50 million doses delivered to the EU.

The news comes amid a serious disruption to Ireland’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout, due to rare blood clotting side effects associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine, as well as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

As of Monday (12th April) there have been 1,076,216 doses of COVID-19 vaccine administered in Ireland: 758,763 people have received their first dose and 317,453 people have received their second dose.

Meanwhile, 431 new cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in Ireland, 21 of them in Meath, the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) confirmed this evening.

They also reported 12 further deaths.

Of the deaths reported today, four occurred in April, two in March and six in January.

The total number of confirmed cases is now 242,105 and the number of Covid-19 related deaths is 4,812.

There are 49 patients with Covid-19 in intensive care units today, down from the peak of around 220.

The number of patients in hospital with Covid-19 is 192.

Of the cases notified today:

204 are men and 226 are women

70 per cent are under 45 years of age

the median age is 33 years old

160 are in Dublin, 50 in Kildare, 34 in Donegal, 21 in Meath, 20 in Limerick and the remaining 146 cases are spread across 20 other counties.