ONLY 4% OF people in Ireland say they will refuse a vaccine against Covid-19, a new survey has found.

A survey conducted by Ipsos MRBI for the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA) heard that 88% of people intend to take a vaccine or have already received one.

7% are unsure.

Ipsos MRBI surveyed 1,002 adults through telephone interviews between 30 April and 11 May.

26% of the sample had already received a vaccine and a further 63% said they intend to take one.

25- to 34-year-olds are the age cohort with the highest levels of refusal or uncertainty – 9% and 12%. 

The proportion of people who have or will receive a vaccine has risen since January while the level of refusals or uncertainty has declined.

In January, 7% planned to refuse a vaccine and 18% were unsure, which has since fallen to 4% and 7% respectively.

Director of Communications and Advocacy at IPHA Bernard Mallee said that it is “clear that vaccination is helping to contain the disease, with indicators across mortality, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and caseload stabilising or decreasing”.

“That is enabling the country to gradually unlock. The health authorities deserve much credit for the speed and efficiency with which they have managed the vaccination programme,” Mallee said.

On Saturday, HSE CEO Paul Reid said that around 45% of adults in Ireland have received a first dose of a vaccine against Covid-19.

Over 15% are fully vaccinated.

Vaccinations have continued over the last week, but regular updates have not been available on the Covid-19 data hub have not been available due to the cyber attack on the HSE’s systems.

As of Tuesday, 11 May, there were 1,922,913 doses of vaccines against Covid-19 administered in Ireland.

Most of these – 1,278,103 – were Pfizer/BioNTech. 555,304 were AstraZeneca; 90,956 were Moderna; and 550 were Janssen.

Reid estimated on Saturday that over 2.3 million doses have been administered.

“Our focus on protecting the public through vaccination remains unrelenting. Without the impacted data from GPs, we’ve likely well over 2.3m vaccines administered,” Reid said.

Some people experienced difficulty registering for a vaccine last Thursday as the portal opened to more adults in their 40s, but it later came back into operation.

The IPHA wants to see countries with sufficient supply share a proportion of doses with lower-income countries to help the rollout of the vaccines internationally.

“By the end of this year, analysts are predicting 11 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses will have been produced – enough doses to vaccinate the world’s adult population,” Mallee said.

“But where governments have significant domestic supplies of Covid-19 vaccine doses, they should share a meaningful proportion of them with low and lower middle-income countries,” he said.

“At the same time, innovators in our industry are working hard to generate responses for variants of concern – an illustration of the importance of protecting intellectual property rights, the formula for scientific invention.”