The Health Minister, Wicklow T.D. Stephen Donnelly says he’s aware that two children of the Master of the Coombe Hospital, were among a number of relatives of staff, who were given Covid vaccine doses
.Minister Donnelly says giving spare vaccines to family members is not in line with the national vaccine strategy and that he will speak with the chair of the Coombe hospital's board to find out precisely what happened.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have a six hour window in which they must be used, once fully defrosted and prepared.
According to the Irish Times, 16 leftover doses remained at the end of the hospital’s vaccine clinic on the 8th of January - and they were administered to relatives of staff.
The Master of the Coombe, Professor Michael O’Connell, says they would have been discarded otherwise, but critics say it would have taken time for relatives to be gathered together and that a group of frontline essential staff could also have been gathered in the same time frame.
