After an interruption of almost two months because of a Cyberattack on the Health Service Executive’s computer system, daily updates of Ireland’s vaccination statistics have at last resumed, including via the Covid-19 app (which has been moribund since 11th May).
You might think it strange but I find the restoration of daily updates reassuring. I suppose it’s because I work in a quantitative discipline but I like having things expressed in figures, though I am of course aware of their uncertainties and other problems involved in interpreting them.
The latest figures above show that about 70% of the adult population has received at least one dose while about 50% have had two doses; the latter are regarded as “fully” vaccinated as are the smaller number who have received the one-shot Janssen vaccine produced by Johnson & Johnson. Although the Government missed by some margin its target of giving one dose to 82% of the adult population by the end of June, I find myself much more optimistic than in past few weeks about how things are going.
Two developments in particular have helped.
First the Government is set to purchase about a million doses of Pfizer/BioNTech from Romania. That would be enough to fully vaccinated about 10% of the population. These doses have become available because take-up in Romania is very poor and the shots would go to waste if not disposed of elsewhere. What’s bad news for Romania is, however, good news for Ireland.
The second change is that the Government has decided to allow the AstraZeneca and Janssen vaccines to be used on adults in the age range 18-34 and that vaccinations of this group are now being carried out by pharmacists. Previously these vaccines were only to be given to persons aged 50 and over. Indications are that there is some reluctance among the younger cohort, which is hardly surprising since it was only a few weeks ago that they were being told these vaccines were too risky, but I suspect this change will go a long way towards fully vaccinating the adult population, which may be possible by the end of August.
I regard the immunization of students next year’s intake to third level education institutions as a necessary condition for opening up campuses to something like “normal” teaching. Just a couple of months ago I didn’t think this would be possible, but now it might be. It’s still possible that there will be disruptions in supply but it’s looking reasonably good at the moment based on the arithmetic of how many doses are available.
The fly in the ointment is of course the so-called Delta Variant, which has already gained a foothold in Ireland and is set to cause case numbers to rise substantially. We will soon see whether this causes an increase in hospitalizations and deaths. The most vulnerable should be protected so the probability of a case turning into serious illness or death should be much lower, but we don’t know by how much. Unfortunately the statistics of Covid-19 are still not being reported publicly. Some people seem to think this means they’re not happening. It doesn’t. It just means the system for reporting them is not working. I expect the forthcoming announcement of the backlog will cause some alarm.
The Irish Government recently decided to pause the gradual reopening of the economy to allow vaccinations to proceed further. There is still a race between the Delta variant and the vaccination programme. The number of people vaccinated increases approximately linearly with time, while the number of Covid-19 cases grows exponentially in the growth phase of the pandemic. I think the pause was sensible.
Across the Irish Sea there is a different situation. The English Government has decided to abandon all attempts to control the spread of Covid-19 at precisely the point when the pandemic is in another exponential phase. The number of cases is now likely to increase dramatically. The number of resulting deaths may be fewer than in previous waves but won’t be zero. Perhaps more importantly, allowing a huge pool of virus to develop increases the chance of yet another variant evolving, perhaps one that can evade the defences afforded by vaccination even more effectively than the Delta variant. I shudder to think of the consequences if that does happen. Perhaps it already has.
In the Dark 