Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On cohort 4, the really good news, which I have just announced today, is that for cohort 4, which is people with underlying conditions who are deemed to be at very high risk of serious illness or fatality, that is going to start next week. The details are still being worked out and I ask the House to bear with us on that. The NIAC recommendation happened very recently and from the moment it was made the HSE has been working through its clinical programmes, through its consultant teams and through its GP networks to identify these groups. These are groups and subgroups of patients all over the country, with quite a wide variety of complex conditions. As to exactly where they will be vaccinated, the current thinking is that it will probably be a combination of hospital settings, where that is appropriate, and GP settings, where that is appropriate. The details are being worked through at the moment.

In terms of Janssen, I share the Deputy’s hope that it will be approved. We have seen what happened in the United States. I very much hope the dates the Deputy has given turn out to be correct. The task force is in very regular communication with Janssen. We have tentative dates but they are so tentative that I do not believe it would be useful to give them out right now. The thinking is that it would not be in March. We would be looking, as soon as that vaccine becomes available, at getting it into the country and into people's arms. As the Deputy said, it has the great advantage of being a single shot vaccine.

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