Interview: No rest for Ireland’s vaccine tsar

Brian MacCraith, chairman of the high-level taskforce on Covid-19 vaccination, has his work cut out in coordinating all bodies involved in the rollout

Professor Brian MacCraith, chair of the Covid-19 vaccination task force Pic: Fergal Phillips

Every Monday, the most senior decision-makers in Ireland’s Covid-19 vaccine programme meet over Microsoft Teams to discuss the week gone by and to plan for the weeks ahead.

As the high-level taskforce on Covid-19 vaccination gathered for its weekly meeting last Monday, there was a fresh crisis at hand regarding the paused rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine due to safety concerns.

“The key issue on the agenda was trying to interpret the AstraZeneca situation and then discuss the potential scenarios,” Brian MacCraith, chair of the taskforce, told the Business Post.