By Vivienne Clarke
A delivery the size of a “10-inch pizza box” could hold close to one thousand doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, the head of the country’s vaccine task force has said.
Professor Brian MacCraith said one delivery of an initial “basic pack” of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine would be enough to inoculate 2,500 people.
Speaking on RTÉ radio's Today with Claire Byrne show, Prof MacCraith said while a quantity had not yet been confirmed, he believed Ireland could receive one container initially before the end of the year.
The basic pack from Pfizer/BioNTech looked like “a 10-inch pizza box,” he said. “In that you have 195 vials. In each vial you have five doses, so 975 doses in a 10-inch box.
“They're shipped in packs of five packs per container. So you would imagine that the minimum supply would be five times that 975, so something just under 5,000 doses.”
Prof MacCraith explained that because the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was a dual dose regimen, if there was a delivery of just one “basic pack” it would be enough to inoculate 2,500 people.
Dual dose
“The other thing you have to think of is that these are dual dose regimens so if you're planning, one would hold back half of those for the second dose to be sure that we're not allowing for the vagaries of supply chain,” he said.
“So it's not a bad number to consider, if that is the first delivery, but not confirmed yet.”
When asked about vaccination passports, Prof MacCraith said that evidence of vaccination was something that could be expected, but “the notion of a community passport is speculation at this stage because there is no scientific evidence to underpin that.”
The Covid-19 vaccine task force is at present considering whether a digital or hardcopy certification of vaccination would be provided, or both, he said.
It comes as the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said coronavirus vaccination certificates are part of the Government's implementation plan, though it will first be necessary to see what impact the jab has on transmission of Covid-19.
He said he had heard airlines were “floating the idea” that passengers would need a vaccination certificate to be able to fly.