One in six adults have had at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, Health Minister says

One in six adults in Ireland have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, the health minister said.

Stephen Donnelly also said that Ireland has one of the lowest rates of Covid-19 in Europe.

It comes as the health service in Ireland plans to ramp up its vaccine programme following months of setbacks and missed targets.

Despite plans to administer one million doses of Covid-19 vaccines throughout April, the Government revised down its target to around 860,000 vaccines.

Last week, Tanaiste Leo Varadkar said that the vast majority of adults will be offered at least one vaccine by the end of June.

On Tuesday, Mr Donnelly tweeted: "One in six adults in Ireland has now received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine.

"The no (number) of people with Covid in ICUs has fallen by about 75% since peak in late January.

"We've one of the lowest rates of Covid-19 in Europe now. We're making huge progress."

There are currently 261 patients in hospital with Covid-19, of which 60 are in ICUs.

It comes as new data shows that more people in almost every county are continuing to travel further than 10km from their home.

An estimated 64.2% of the population stayed local during the week ending March 26, according to the Central Statistics Office's latest Staying Local Indicator (SLI).

With the exception of Monaghan, which shows no week-on-week change, all counties showed SLI decreases, ranging from 1.6 percentage points in Meath to 0.2 percentage points in Mayo.

Dublin continues to be the county with the highest percentage of the population staying local at 79.2%, reflecting its urbanised nature and access to services compared with other counties.

The data shows that there continues to be a relaxation in adherence to Covid-19 travel restrictions.

The ninth SLI uses anonymised mobile phone activity records to measure the public's movements across seven days.

Propensity to stay within 10km of residence tends to differ by county, as movement is impacted by local circumstances and conditions, such as access to services and levels of urbanisation.