Vaccination roll-out gets back on track

More than 2,000 local people aged 65-69 will have received a first dose of vaccine at Ballybrit Racecourse mass vaccination centre by the end of this week as the rollout of jabs gets back on track.

The acceleration of administration of AstraZeneca vaccine to over-65s in Galway and Roscommon comes as the West’s vaccine tsar hailed the vaccination programme as the solution to the Covid-19 pandemic – and it’s working.

“It’s our only way out of this and it’s working. It really is working,” insisted Paul Hooton, clinical lead for the rollout of the vaccination programme in the West and North West.

Mr Hooton, Director of Nursing and Midwifery at Saolta Hospital Group, said the benefits of the vaccine are already being enjoyed in local nursing homes and hospitals.

Across the region, including Galway, staff and residents of nursing homes have all been vaccinated. “It’s had a great impact – Covid outbreaks in care homes are pretty much gone now,” he said.

The same was true of hospital-acquired staff infections. “Pretty much all patient-facing healthcare workers are vaccinated. The rate of transmission of Covid among hospital staff is pretty much zero,” Mr Hooton said.

At the height of the third wave after Christmas, around 1,000 healthcare workers in Galway were off work, because they contracted the virus or they were self-isolating after close contact with an infected patient or colleague. Covid absenteeism was “pretty much gone now” because staff are vaccinated.

“From a healthcare workforce perspective and a care home perspective, it has pretty much gone away, for now. We have to keep our guard up with new variants and so on but in the whole it has been a real success,” added Mr Hooton.

Read our comprehensive Covid coverage in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now – or you can download our digital paper from www.connachttribune.ie