Ms Rachel Morrogh:

As the Deputy will probably know, cancer patients are considered an at-risk group. Therefore, they are encouraged to get the flu vaccine every year. Certainly, the Irish Cancer Society will be playing its part in that regard and encouraging cancer patients to get vaccinated.

It is important as well that, while I would expect there to be probably a high uptake among cancer patients, we encourage people at a population level to go and get vaccinated this year. When we think about the impact of flu and seasonal diseases on the treatment of cancer care, and we know that elective surgeries have decreased by 15% during the winter months because of the impact of flu on the hospital system, with the reduced capacity that we are now experiencing as a result of Covid we need to do everything we can to ensure that people will not end up hospitalised and to keep capacity for the urgent cases.