Watch: All smiles as Cork's newest vaccination centre opens its doors
Jackie Kelleher, Alzheimers Society of Ireland with her vaccination card leaving the healthcare workers vaccination clinic which opened at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Cork. Picture Dan Linehan.
Healthcare workers are all smiles this morning after receiving the Covid-19 vaccination at Cork's newest vaccination centre.
Around 1,400 healthcare staff are set to be vaccinated at Páirc Uí Chaoimh’s vaccination centre in the coming days, followed by the vaccination of people in high-risk groups next week.
The vaccination centre opens its doors this morning, with up to 700 healthcare workers to be vaccinated today and tomorrow.
The centre is part of a network of five vaccination centres across six locations in Cork.
The rollout of the vaccine at the centre will follow the Government’s provisional allocation groups, with healthcare workers being vaccinated this week and people in category four (those at a very high risk of Covid-19) being vaccinated from Tuesday.
Vaccination lead at Páirc Uí Chaoimh Aífe O’Connell, a clinical nurse manager (CNM2) on the paediatric ward at Mercy University Hospital (MUH), said there would be “a huge variety of healthcare workers” vaccinated over the next two days, but there would still be additional healthcare workers in Cork who needed a vaccine.
“There will be some days in the future where we will be running more clinics for them but, at the moment, it really is vaccine-dependent and once we have the vaccine we can give it to them,” she said.
It is expected that almost all frontline healthcare workers in Cork, both public and private, will be vaccinated by the end of the month.
The centre has 30 booths and a capacity to vaccinate up to 3,000 people a day. This capacity is not expected to be in use until later in the vaccination rollout and will depend on many factors, including vaccine supply.
“We’ll be starting with 10 to 15 booths and then we’ll be able to scale that up,” Ms O’Connell said.
“Our maximum capacity would be 30 booths, one vaccination per booth and, as and when the vaccine is available, we’ll scale it up.”
Depending on vaccine supply and the numbers required to be vaccinated, the centre will have the capability to operate 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
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