Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Critically, there is no reason anyone in a nursing home or who attends community care day centres, on a daily or weekly basis, should not be facilitated with the vaccine. By and large, the people attending those centres are older. Second, we have the more recent reports of the carbapenemase-producing enterobacteriaceae, CPE, bug. The HSE has acknowledged that it is extremely difficult to treat and already it has caused a significant number of deaths. A combination of this bug in hospitals and vulnerable people, both older and younger, going into hospitals as inpatients means a much higher risk in terms of mortality in that those who are ill with flu can get pneumonia and are highly exposed to the risk of developing the CPE bug. The HSE message is not being communicated sufficiently to people, including the HSE's own staff, where there seems to be a reluctance to get the vaccine. I urge the Government to act and minimise the damage and harm to people.

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