Dr. Colm Henry:

This week, if the Deputy was listening to the airwaves, she would have heard many of us trying to remind people of the importance of this. Covid has not gone away as a threat, especially to people whose immune system cannot muster up the immunological response the rest of us can muster to give us protection. We are constantly renewing that message but perhaps people do not perceive it as being as much of a risk. It is true, of course, that the Omicron variant that we have been living with now since the winter of 2021 has a lower conversion rate to serious illness than the Alpha and Delta variants but nevertheless, we are still seeing people come to hospital. Those who are unvaccinated, that is, those with no primary vaccine, remain disproportionately represented among those who are hospitalised with Covid and those who enter intensive care.