'Bring in the pharmacists to speed up vaccine rollout' - Keogan

Meat East Independent Senator Sharon Keogan has voiced her frustration as to why the country's pharmacists have not been mobilised to assist in the Govt's vaccination roillout programme.

And she countered Ossian Smyth TD, Minister of State with special responsibility for Public Procurement and eGovernment's suggestion that the programme had been a success to date saying it "was too slow."

Speaking on the 'This Week with Katie Hannon' programme on RTE Radio on Saturday, Senator Keogan said she didn't believe the rollout had been a success. "We have two million people vaccinated, but we've only got 500,000 people with their second dose."

"So, it has been slow and it continues to be slow and will continue to be slow until we get more vaccinations.

"They (Government) sat down with the pharmaceutical agencies here in Ireland in January to roll it out in pharmacies. I think they sent out expressions of interest to the pharmacies and 1,200 pharmacies were approved by the regulator to roll out vaccinations in their practices.

"Nobody has been in touch with those yet. Why are they not being used? Why are we setting up these big vaccination centres, when we have 1,200 pharmacies, ready to go there now, and they even can't even get vaccinators for their centres.

"I've heard of pharmacists who've tried to register, do the right thing for the country to go in there, maybe on a Saturday or Sunday, and they cannot do that because they only want people full time."

The Minister responded that vaccines we're being distributed as soon as they arrived into the country at a rate where 95 per cent of the vaccines received by the HSE are distributed in that week.

"The mass vaccination centres are an efficient way of distributing vaccines. It's a military operation, a huge number of people can go through in the period that's there. So the fact that we're getting all the vaccines out, as we receive them is shows that we do have sufficient staff, and that we do have sufficient capacity in these vaccination centres which are in every county in Ireland."

It was announced this week that a second mass vaccination centre at Fairyhouse in Ratoath will be established in the coming weeks with double the capacity of the facility operating at Simonstown in Meath.