Around 500,000 people a week could be in line for Covid jabs in the coming months, the head of Ireland's vaccine rollout has said.
Professor Brian MacCraith of the High Level Vaccine task force said that as vaccine supply increases here so will resources to ramp up getting the jabs into people's arms
Prof MacCraith added that vaccines will be rolled out seven days a week once the supply is greatly increased in the second and third quarter of the year.
Speaking to RTE Radio 1's Katie Hannon Prof MacCraith said: "It all comes down to the stability of the supply.
"At the moment there is 37 (vaccine centres) that have been identified. 11 of those are the larger vaccination centres and the other 26 are on a one per county basis.
"A number of the larger vaccination centres are already being used.
"They can run up to 50 booths and they can run up to 5,000 vaccinations a day running on a 12 hour day.
"So on a 12 hour day, seven day week those large centres can do up to 35,000 vaccinations a week.
"When we move to the larger volumes of vaccine doses arriving in the country...the limitation will only be supply. "The infrastructure, resources and people will scale up to maximum supplies.
"So when we get into at least a million (vaccine doses) a month in quarter 2 and closer to 2 million in quarter 3 the infrastructure will match that."
MacCraith added that there was "potential" for 500,000 vaccines to be doled out each week by quarter 3 given vaccine supply stays on track.
"Over 300,000 vaccinations per week are possible with the large centres and over 200,000 vaccinations a week are possible with the county centres So that will bring you up to half a million per week, it's possible."
Ireland's vaccine rollout has been subject to much criticism for the slow pace at which it is moving compared to other nations.
However Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said that
Meanwhile HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid said that hospital staff across the country are "exhausted" following the recent surge in Covid hospitalisations.
Mr Reid said that there was "continued improvement" in hospital figures with 550 yesterday hospitalised with coronavirus, 135 of which were in ICU.
However Reid added that there was hope the country was turning a corner with cases dropping and more vaccines being administered.
He said: "Our healthcare teams are exhausted but getting their vaccination and the great signs of it reducing transmission is giving us all a second wind. We are winning, it's just not over yet."
