Provisional vaccine schedule released for Northern Ireland…

Well, where are you in the queue for the vaccine? I reck0n I’d be scheduled for phase seven… This afternoon, the BBC reports that priority groups one and two will be targeted this month, one being care home residents and staff, and…

…in priority group two, there will be more than 71,000 health and social care workers, and about 82,000 people aged over 80, who don’t live in care homes.

In January and February 2021, Phase two will cover Priority Groups three to seven. That takes in the over-65s (233,000), and vulnerable people under 65 who have underlying conditions – those who are extremely vulnerable (95,000) and those at a moderate risk (130,000).

Phase three concerns groups 8 to 10 – the over-50s who have not already been vaccinated by then. Altogether, there are about 366,000 of them – over-60s (106,000), the over-55s (125,000) and the over-50s (135,000).

If you are not sure which group you are in, here’s the department’s schema:

Now, all sorts of caveats come with this, but as noted here on Slugger back in March…

…international collaboration is fast-forwarding testing techniques so we will get more precise information about who has the virus and who has had the virus now in the short to medium term and then a vaccine in the longer term.

Of course, innovation will still play with the current plans. As new vaccines roll out they may continue to  change the pace and the timing. Mass vaccination won’t be in place next year, and currently is not expected at all until September 2021. And there will be research needed to look out for side effects.

It’s been a good year for scientific collaboration and open and international collaboration between research based public sector and otherwise academies and big Pharma. Let’s hope we can put these new habits to other uses too (like exploring how to tackle climate change, in the most effective way)?

“A hospital corpsman prepares a flu vaccine dose aboard USS John S. McCain (DDG 56).” by Official U.S. Navy Imagery is licensed under CC BY

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty