Booster jabs should be rolled out to every adult six months after their initial vaccination against Covid-19, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said.
A booster program is already under way in the Republic for healthcare workers and those over 60, with the National Immunization Advisory Council (Niac) also considering extending it to people under 60 with underlying conditions.
Mr Varadkar said he believes it will be necessary to expand the program to the wider population.
He told reporters: “My sense, looking at the evidence that I’m reading in the medical journals, looking at examples from around the world, places like Israel, I think it will make sense to extend the booster program to the wider population.
“Really any adult who is more than six months after their second dose. But the next group that we’re examining is people under 60, with a medical condition.
“The absolute focus now is on getting it out to the people over 60, through the GP, through the pharmacies and through the vaccine centers, and that’s going really well.”
Mr Varadkar has assessed the current Covid-19 situation as “fragile but stable”, having earlier warned that daily case numbers will reach 4,000 in the coming days.
“Cases are very high, and they are continuing to rise, we expect them to continue to rise over the next couple of days,” he said.
“But I think it’s important to say that we’ll never make any decision based on cases alone, we will always look at other factors. The number of people in hospital, the number of people in ICU, for example.
“Thankfully, that’s been relatively stable. Despite the increase in cases, the number of people in hospital, the number of people in ICU is much the same as it was a week or two ago.
“And that gives us confidence that the vaccine wall is holding but gives us no reason to be complacent at all. So we have to continue with the vaccine program. The booster shots for the over 60s in particular and health care workers.”
Mr Varadkar said cases will begin to fall in the coming weeks, with things getting closer to normal after the winter period. However, he warned that the following winter could see outbreaks return.
“I’d be confident that we will get through the winter and we’ll be in a much better place again in spring and summer,” he said.
“But of course next winter, this virus, which is now endemic, could reappear again.
“And at that point, if vaccine immunity has waned, and natural immunity has waned, you could see outbreaks again. So this is a pandemic, unfortunately, that is not just going to end one day.
“We’ll never be able to declare a mission accomplished. But it will fizzle out. I think if we can get through this winter, spring and summer will be very, very normal, much more like we’re used to before the pandemic started.
“But we can really run into difficulties next winter again. And that’s the nature of respiratory viruses.”