Vaccination queue-jumpers will be offered second Covid-19 jab

Mater Hospital board member David Begg said he was offered and he accepted the vaccine

Maeve Sheehan

April 11 2021 02:30 AM

Teachers at St Gerard’s School in Bray and other vaccine queue-jumpers will receive their second doses of the jab, the Health Service Executive has confirmed.

The HSE said it has “a duty of care clinically to administer second doses, therefore vaccinations will have to be honoured”.

Twenty teachers at the private school were vaccinated out of turn at the invitation of the chief executive of the Beacon private hospital last month. They will be offered second doses of the AstraZeneca jab 12 weeks from their first, on March 23.

As the scandal resulted in the closure of the vaccination centre at the Beacon, the HSE said the teachers will be given appointments at other vaccination centres in the vicinity.

Reports of vaccine queue-jumping continued last week. David Begg, a former union chief who sits on the board of the Mater hospital, confirmed he was offered and accepted the vaccine, which HSE chief Paul Reid described as a “breach” of vaccine protocol.

The HSE, which also confirmed that 50 staff from two special schools received vaccinations at the Beacon, has appointed Cornelia Stewart, a former assistant national director, to investigate the vaccine rollout at the private hospital.

It is understood second doses of Pfizer vaccine were offered to all those vaccinated.

A report on the Coombe’s vaccine programme revealed that 16 relatives of staff were vaccinated, while a hospital consultant brought the vaccine home to vaccinate family members. It is understood they have all been offered second doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

Meanwhile, records released by the Health Service Executive reveal nurses at St John’s Hospital and University Hospital Limerick complained in February about people getting the vaccine out of turn. The complaints were not upheld.

In an email to hospital management on February 9, the INMO complained it had received “many complaints” from nurses that “non-frontline personnel received first-dose vaccines today”.

“Nurses contacting the INMO in Limerick are very angry this evening, working on Covid wards and still left out of priority vaccinations today when many administration staff and some on maternity leave were vaccinated in their place.”

The complaint was escalated to the chief clinical officer, Dr Colm Henry, who spoke to the INMO’s director, Phil Ni Sheaghda. However, the hospital’s vaccine lead said the 250 surplus doses were offered to frontline staff at Croom, Nenagh and St John’s.

UHL chief executive Colette Cowan claimed the INMO representative who escalated the original complaint had “failed” to give the “facts of her assertions”.

The INMO said raised concerns of vaccine queue-jumping from frontline members with local management and the HSE, “seeking that the Government policy on vaccine priority would be upheld”.