The COVID-19 vaccination programme for County Mayo has now moved to the newly established Vaccination Centre in Breaffy House, Castlebar. Over the coming weeks the programme to vaccinate health care workers across hospital, community and other health care workers continues in the new facility and vaccination teams will prepare for the site to be used as a Vaccination Centre for the wider public

Paul Hooton, Chief Director of Nursing and Midwifery at the Saolta Group says at this point, they are confident that almost all healthcare workers in hospitals have received the vaccination (first dose) and many have now received their second dose. There are many thousands of frontline healthcare workers working outside of hospitals and over the last number of weeks we have been steadily nearing completion for this group, which includes workers from the public and private health services, those employed by the HSE and those employed by agencies. They have also commenced the vaccination programme for the next group identified, these are people aged 16 to 69 who are at very high risk due to their medical condition.

 Across the west and north west Saolta has established six Vaccination Centres which will be used to deliver the vaccination programme to the wider public.

Mr Hooten says that in Breaffy House, staff from Mayo University Hospital and Community Healthcare West are administering the vaccine and are currently recruiting additional staff, including vaccinators to ensure that the necessary teams are in place to deliver the COVID-19 vaccination programme to the people of Mayo.

When the centre is at capacity, it intends to be vaccinating 2,500 people per day.