04/05/2021
Covid 19 Vaccination Update
As you may know GP practices including us at Carrigaline Medical Practice have been offering Covid Vaccination to our patients over 70 years of age.
As we undertook vaccinating this group the HSE tasked hospitals with complying lists of patients in cohort 4a (medical very high risk) and cohort 7 (medical high risk).
Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that not all hospitals were able to identify these patients and thus it fell back onto General Practice to identify these groups and then opt in or out of vaccinating them.
Once practices have completed vaccinating their over 70s population, they can choose to proceed to vaccinate the next designated cohort which is group 4a. This group includes those aged 18-59yrs with illnesses which put them at very high risk of severe disease from Covid19 such as poorly controlled diabetes, severe immune suppression and Obesity with BMI > 40.
Once the 4a group has been vaccinated, practices then have the option to proceed further and to vaccinate cohort 7 patients, namely those aged 18-59, with illnesses which put them at high risk. This group includes most chronic illnesses and is a much bigger group.
To date we at Carrigaline Medical Practice have almost completed vaccinating our over 70s population and we have undertaken to vaccinate the cohort 4a patients.
Following that however we are limited by premises size and both medical and administrative manpower, and thus unfortunately do not have the capacity to undertake vaccination of the larger group cohort 7.
The day-to-day work of General Practice outside of Covid 19 has taken a backseat over the last 14 months and as such we need to re direct our energies back to better serving our patients in this regard.
Once we have finished vaccinating our cohort 4a we will be delegating the vaccination of our cohort 7 patients to the HSE vaccination hubs. If you are in this group, we will be referring you directly to the HSE via a secure GP portal once this portal is up and running. The HSE will contact you once they begin vaccinating your cohort. There is no need to contact us to check if you have been included.
At the same time as all this the HSE are continuing to roll out Covid vaccines based on age cohorts. We have no control over when the HSE will call our cohort 7 patients, so we STRONGLY recommend that you register yourself with the HSE Covid Vaccination portal when it opens to your age cohort.
We hope you will understand that this decision not to vaccinate cohort 7 in the surgery is taken in the best interests of our practice, our practice staff and most importantly our patients.
If you have any further queries regarding vaccination, please see the HSE website https://www2.hse.ie/screening-and-vaccinations/covid-19-vaccine/rollout/
Kind regards,
Dr Claire McCarthy & Dr Padraig McGillicuddy
People who are most at risk from COVID-19 are being vaccinated first. Safety is our priority while we work to protect people as quickly as we can.
