NI closing in on 500,000 vaccinations

Patricia Donnelly, speaking in a briefing with members of the media on Tuesday afternoon, said the roll-out is likely to ramp up next month as supplies become more readily available.

“I’m very pleased to say we’re making excellent progress,” she said.

“We have nearly 500,000 doses administered across Northern Ireland as we work through priority groups one-to-six.

“Our latest group that we have called forward are carers. I’m happy to say over 54,000 of them have booked on over the last number of days.”

She continued: “We are still vaccinating the clinically extremely vulnerable. We’re still vaccinating the small number of over-65s that remain — there are very few of them left. We will work through these before we move on to other age cohorts.”

On supplies, she said: “We have had a steady but modest vaccine supply to date but we’re hoping for much larger numbers coming through in March and April, and we’ll escalate the programme accordingly.

“We’re quite optimistic about the future. We’re feeling pleased with what has happened to date. There are many things that we need to deal with along the way.”

The head of the vaccine roll-out also confirmed that a number of people from the Republic of Ireland had attempted to secure a vaccination in Northern Ireland but had been turned away.

She said: “We have had a few reports but they are very, very small. When individuals have booked on to the vaccination booking platform, but when they’ve arrived they haven’t had a health and social care number. We have turned them away.”