Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I certainly share his desire to get as much vaccine into the country as possible. As a starting point, we would use vaccines authorised by the EMA. I can confirm the EMA has now put Sputnik on its rolling review, which is a step on the way to the manufacturers of Sputnik applying for conditional marketing authorisation. I have asked the task force to take at look at what other legitimate avenues might be available. Certainly if there are EU countries that do not want to use all of their AstraZeneca doses we will most certainly take them. There are some countries where the uptake of AstraZeneca has been poor, for sloppy reasons to be perfectly honest whereby the wrong information was put out. In fact, the emerging and ongoing evidence on AstraZeneca in the field is very positive. I fully agree with the thrust of what the Deputy is asking. If there are other supplies we can access certainly the task force will look to see what they may be.

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