Health officials to advise on vaccine rollout at nursing homes fighting Covid outbreaks

Public health officials will advise on the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccination programme to residents and staff at nursing homes fighting outbreaks, the HSE has said.

Health guidance being followed in the vaccination programmes means any nursing home residents fighting or recovery from an infection will not receive the vaccine.

However, the HSE has said that the vaccine will “play an important role in protecting people in settings where there is a higher risk of infection because of an outbreak.”

Vaccination is “an important control measure in outbreaks of infectious disease,” the HSE said, and that public health officials will advise Covid-19 vaccinators administering doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in care facilities that are battling outbreaks of the disease.

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The measures are being taken as new official health statistics show the number of outbreaks in nursing homes have grown as infections in the community have risen since Christmas.

There were 22 new outbreaks in nursing homes reported in the week to January 2nd, an increase of 10 on the previous week. There are 65 positive cases linked to these outbreaks.

There are 64 open outbreaks in nursing homes.

An outbreak or cluster is defined as two or more cases of lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases and an outbreak is not declared closed until 28 days have passed without a new positive case.

New HSE figures show that the positivity rate in the fortnightly serial testing of nursing home staff has risen 1.22 per cent, almost four times the rate a month ago and the highest positivity rate recorded to date since the regular testing of staff began during the summer.

There were 811 detected cases identified among 66,448 tests conducted during the sixth cycle of serial testing in the nursing homes in the four-week period to January 3rd.

The Government hopes to vaccinate all 30,000 nursing home residents and 35,000 staff in the country’s 582 nursing homes by the end of next month.

About 3,000 nursing home residents and staff will receive vaccine this week.

The rollout of the programme continues on Thursday with the first privately owned nursing homes having both residents and staff receiving the first of the two-dose vaccine.

Residents and staff at 21 nursing homes are due to start receiving vaccines on Thursday and Friday followed by more than 150 nursing homes and community care facilities next week.

People are advised not to receive a vaccine until they recover from Covid-19 and it is at least four weeks after symptoms were first noticed or four weeks since a positive test for the virus.

“The vaccine will not be given to people who have active infection or who are in the recovery phase after infection. However, when it is given to people who are not yet infected it can help to protect both residents and staff who have not yet been infected,” the HSE said.

The health service said evidence shows that significant benefits begin to be seen in people about 12 days after the first dose of the vaccine is administered.

“The risk of exposure to vaccination teams can be managed by good infection prevention and control practice and by vaccination of the vaccination teams,” said the HSE.

“This general approach will be applied in each case subject to the advice of Public Health Departments advising on the management of the individual outbreak.”