THE EUROPEAN CENTRE for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has said there was an issue with vaccine data reported from Ireland which claimed the country had administered more than 430,000 vaccines.

Latest statistics from the HSE show that nearly 200,000 vaccine doses have been administered so far in Ireland. 

The ECDC’s new vaccine tracker which shows vaccination numbers in each EU country claims that 438,000 doses have been distributed and administered in Ireland to date. 

Responding to a query from TheJournal.ie, a spokesperson for the ECDC said “it appears that there was an issue with the data that was reported from Ireland”.

“Member States may upload data at any time but as a minimum they are requested to report on a biweekly basis every Tuesday for the previous week and every Friday for the current week,” the ECDC spokesperson said. 

“This may lead to some discrepancies between the national figures and the figures published by ECDC.”

It added that it had not included data from Northern Ireland in with figures from the Republic of Ireland.

Speaking at a press briefing this evening, the Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said he is not sure how this issue arose. 

“I don’t exactly know where the error occurred, but that clearly is not correct. We know we have vaccinated somewhere in the region of about 200,000 people in this country and that number continues to increase day on day,” Holohan said. 

The Department of Health has been contacted for further comment.

According to the HSE, between 25 and 31 January, 50,900 people received a vaccine dose. Most of these were second doses.

43,000 frontline healthcare workers received their second dose in the last week and are now fully vaccinated, alongside 1,500 who were given their first dose.

- With reporting by Garreth MacNamee