Helping hand Tánaiste Leo Varadkar says he will personally administer Covid-19 vaccines if needed

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has offered to administer Covid-19 vaccines to people if help is needed when a greater supply is delivered to the country.

He said right now lack of administrators is not an issue but that when the country receives more vaccines he is “available and certainly happy to help with the vaccine clinics”.

Speaking on Newstalk’s The Hard Shoulder, the former GP said: “I am available, the medical council extended my registration and that of other non-practicing doctors so I said to the HSE that I am availbale certainly to help with the vaccine clinics if they need me.

"I’d be more than willing to do it and I’ve a group of 150 or so non-practicing or retired GP’s who are willing to do it.

“They don’t need us yet because there aren’t enough vaccines in the country yet but we might get to that point in the next couple of weeks and I’m certainly available."

The Tánaiste added he would prefer to be working in ICU but that he’s not qualified.

"It’s not the kind of frontline work in ICU that I’d like to be doing but to be honest I’m out of date and not qualified but I am in certain areas and happy to help out,” he said.

According to Mr Varadkar and HSE CEO Paul Reid 77,000 people have been vaccinated in Ireland so far.

The Tánaiste said these figures will be shortly up online on the Covid hub, however, for the moment they will not be updated daily and he said he could not give a date on when they will be.

He added that from next week between 40,000 and 50,000 people will be vaccinated and that this weekly figure isn’t likely to change until the AstraZeneca vaccine is approved and delivered to the country.

However, Mr Varadkar said when the AstraZeneca vaccine does arrive between 100,000-150,000 vaccines should be administered weekly.

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