With most staff and residents vaccinated, the health service is expected to make new proposals to Nphet for this sector

HSE considers ending surge capacity arrangements with private hospitals as number of Covid-19 hospitalisations falls

The National Service Plan shows that €200m of the €1.6bn allocated to fighting the pandemic is to be spent on the rollout of vaccinations

The Covid-19 crisis has laid bare the many shortcomings in our health service, but it’s those at the coalface who understand best what is needed to fix it

Tánaiste says rollout to older people will be slower following recommendation that Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, rather than AstraZeneca, should be used for this group

New cases and hospitalisations are falling, but the alarming mortality figures are set to continue for the coming days

Way in which new infections are counted could lead to a considerable under-reporting of imported cases

Our 14-day incidence has halved in the past ten days and numbers being admitted to ICU has started to slow

Many scientists believe indoor aerosol transmission may explain why so many people picked up the virus over the Christmas period, so why is there so little focus on the importance of ventilation?

In spite of some initial hiccups, the programme is up and running but the advice is to ‘hold firm’ until herd immunity is established

Poor planning has beset Ireland’s fight against Covid-19 from the start, and we are still lacking

GPs are the first line of defence in a health system that’s doing its best to keep Covid in check. But the past week has seen positivity rates of 40 per cent to 50 per cent in communities, putting every stage of that same system under enormous pressure

Contact tracers say many people testing positive over the holiday season cited 20 to 35 close contacts

Ireland needs to be vaccinating upwards of 100,000 people a week but we show no signs of getting close to that figure

Tracers are being urged to speed up calls to work through the huge backlog

Gainshare initiative provided an incentive for hospitals to switch to biosimilar medicines as soon as originals had gone off patent

Many people who would be better served by GPs, pharmacists and minor injury units turn up in A&E instead, says the HSE

An initial shipment of 9,750 vaccines arrived into the country on Saturday while a further 40,000 vaccines are to arrive weekly throughout January and February