NPHET member Professor Philip Nolan has said that we likely will not be able to go back to gigs and large sporting events until herd immunity is reached in Ireland.
Professor Philip Nolan, chair of the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group and NPHET member, has said that we may have to wait until north of 70% of the population is vaccinated before gigs and large sporting events will be possible.
“Before we are all packed indoors in an intense social setting, or there are very large mass gatherings, we are going to have to have over 70 per cent of the population immune and probably higher because of new variants,” Nolan said.
“Until we are approaching that herd immunity threshold, those kinds of large or very crowded indoor social gatherings are not going to be safe”
The Irish Government is aiming to have all adults in Ireland vaccinated by September 2021, though has recently shied away from providing a precise timeline.
According to most up-to-date figures, 147,700 first doses of the vaccine have already been administered in the State, as well as 13,800 second doses.
Meanwhile, other jabs that the Irish government have pre-ordered, such as the Moderna vaccine and the AstraZeneca vaccine, have been granted the official seal of approval by the European Medicines Agency.
Both of these firms, however, have had issues with the delivery of doses, falling short of previous delivery commitments.
AstraZeneca will, following a rancorous and public row with the EU over deliveries to the block, deliver a total of 400,000 vaccines to the Republic of Ireland.
Ireland pre-ordered 875,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine, some of which have already been administered to health professionals in Ireland.
However, the company said that it will not be able to fully satisfy delivery quotas during the month of February, with a spokeswoman for the pharma giant telling the HSE that it “cannot give certainty” as to how many doses Ireland will actually receive this month.
