During Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil today, Róisín Shortall TD, co-leader of the Social Democrats, asked the Taoiseach to publish daily figures for vaccine doses received, doses available, and doses administered, so that the performance of the vaccine rollout can be measured against projections.
She said:
“Vaccines provide great hope to people, and the public is now keen to know the dates that they’ll be receiving their doses. We also need much greater transparency so that the performance of the vaccine programme can be assessed.
“While we now have figures for the daily doses administered, we don’t have any regularly updated data on the deliveries of vaccines into Ireland. We are dependent on the figures provided in the Government’s Path Ahead plan of 23rd February.
“Those figures tell us that Ireland should have had 624,595 vaccine doses delivered by now, yet the total administered falls well short of that figure. Why is the number of doses administered nearly 30% lower on average? The gaps are particularly large with respect to AstraZeneca, which is two-thirds lower, and Moderna, which is four-fifths lower. It indicates that there is a big difference between the number of vaccines delivered and the number actually administered.
“I am calling on the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health to explain why there is a such a substantial gap between doses delivered and administered, and I am asking them to commit to publishing daily figures for the number of doses received and doses available, in addition to the figures already available for doses administered.
“Over the past seven days, there has been an average of just over 12,000 vaccines administered per day. This figure will need to be ramped up to over 40,000 per day if we’re to be ready to roll out the mass vaccine programme from April onward, when we’ve been promised 1.2 million doses per month.
“Where is the published plan to ensure that the facilities and full staffing are in place to make this mass vaccination a reality? That plan needs to be published and publicly available. It is only by being completely transparent with the data that it will be possible for the public to have confidence in the rollout.”
Ends
March 3, 2021
Notes:
Table 1: Supply forecast vs. total administered vaccines
| Vaccine | Supply forecast for January and February (1) | Cumulative total administered to end of February (2) |
| Pfizer BioNTech | 393,120 | 363,923 |
| Moderna | 40,800 | 8,630 |
| AstraZeneca | 190,675 | 67,229 |
| Total | 624,595 | 439,782 |
Doses received: This is the number of doses delivered into Ireland.
Doses available: The number of doses received versus the number of doses available is to allow for an appropriate buffer and to account for safeguarding second doses as necessary.
Doses administered: This is the number of doses administered as part of the vaccination programme.
(1) “Q1 & Q2 Vaccine Supply Forecast,” Covid-19 Resilience & Recovery 2021: The Path Ahead, pg. 32.
(2) Covid-19 Data Hub. Figures up to 28 February 2021. Ireland’s COVID19 Data Hub – Vaccinations (arcgis.com).