In the region of 800 families of Pfizer staff in Cork are to be offered Covid-19 vaccines over the coming months, with the first family/household members to be offered the vaccine from next month.

Pfizer has informed its staff in Ireland that it will be offering the Covid-19 vaccine to their immediate family members in the months ahead and planning is currently underway on how the vaccine programme will be rolled out.

A spokesperson for Pfizer told the Echo that the programme will see immediate family/household members aged over 60 initially offered the vaccine.

“At the moment we are currently planning this phase of the programme with regard to the prioritisation groupings of the national vaccination programme and will start with immediate family/household members over age 60 initially (from mid next month onward) and then progress to include other age categories at a later stage,” the spokesperson said.

The vaccination programme is being run independently by Pfizer and the company spokesperson explained that vaccine doses used in this programme are separate to the supply provided to the government.

All of the costs associated with the programme are being covered by the company.

It comes as the latest official figures show that almost 1 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine have been administered in Ireland.

Data up to Tuesday shows 935,703 doses of the vaccine have been administered in Ireland under the national vaccination programme with 251,210 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered and 54,052 doses of the Moderna vaccine administered.

Of the 1,240,965 vaccine doses administered, 878,823 first doses and 362,142 second doses have been administered.