To avoid a recurrence of last year where there was a massive spike of hospitalisations (due to Delta), the Irish health service is keen to get as many people th

To avoid a recurrence of last year where there was a massive spike of hospitalisations (due to Delta), the Irish health service is keen to get as many people their booster shot before Christmas. It looks like we’ll be doing the same in Ireland: https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/1215/1266843-covid-christmas/ https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/1215/1266843-covid-... Last winter, the number of cases started growing from November onwards – even before newer variants such as Delta became a concern – but the government was under huge public and media pressure not to introduce further restrictions to control the spread. They went against the recommendations of the National Public Health Emergency Team (as they’re entitled to do so) and allowed Christmas and pre-Christmas to proceed without restrictions. Predictably, the case numbers grew exponentially and they had to bring in another lock-down a couple of days after Christmas. Unfortunately, it was too late and in the New Year, case numbers surged far higher and quicker than they had in 2020, ICU beds filled to capacity and it took many months of restrictions to restore Covid-19 incidence to a manageable level. Almost everyone is hoping that the current set of approved vaccines will work effectively enough against Omicron that we’ll avoid a repeat of last year. While I haven’t (yet) “done my own research”, our National Immunisation Advisory Committee is fairly conservative so I’m not overly concerned if they recommend removing the 15-minute observation period to increase throughput and allow more citizens to get a booster shot sooner. As software developers might say, “the perfect is the enemy of the good”.