ALMOST 72,000 12-15 year olds have received a Covid vaccine since the programme opened up to that cohort, the HSE has said.

Speaking at the HSE’s weekly briefing today, CEO Paul Reid said 124,000 people in this age group have been registered for a vaccine.

He said the uptake of the vaccine so far has exceeded expectations but urged those who have not yet received a vaccine to come forward. 

The briefing heard that public health departments are concerned that unvaccinated healthcare workers may have contributed to the introduction of the virus in certain settings.

“I’m sure that wasn’t their intention,” said Professor Martin Cormican, HSE national lead for health care-associated infection and antimicrobial resistance. 

“We have to understand that there is some hesitancy around vaccination and we try to work with colleagues on that, but clearly, we would be a lot more comfortable if all healthcare workers looking after vulnerable people were fully vaccinated.

“We do have a process in place to risk assess people who are not vaccinated to look at the role that they’re in, to look at the risk to them and they risk they might pose to others. And in some cases, people may have to be redeployed at least temporarily, if the risk to them, or the risk to others is too high from being unvaccinated.”

Professor Cormican also said the number of hospital-acquired cases of Covid has started to increase in recent weeks.

There are 244 patients with Covid-19 in hospital today with 54 of those patients in ICU.

52% of patients in hospital with Covid are not fully vaccinated while 45% are fully vaccianted.

62% of Covid patients in ICU are not vaccinated at all, 15% are partially vaccinated and 23% are fully vaccinated.

The HSE said 82% of Covid cases in hospital were either admitted with or are now being treated for it in hospital, while 11% are asymptomatic and not infectious.