Irish people are conflicted about the possibility of accepting Covid jabs from the UK

Irish people are having conflicted feelings about the possibility of the UK offering Covid-19 vaccines to help with the country’s stuttering roll-out of jabs.

The Sunday Times reported this morning that the British government was preparing to offer 3.7 million jabs to Ireland - in part due to concerns about whether Northern Ireland will be able to lift its lockdown as quickly as the rest of the UK due to its land border with the Republic.

According to the most recent figures from Our World In Data, Ireland’s rate of vaccine doses given out so far is about 15 per 100 people, while that figure is about 47 per 100 people in the UK.

The slower pace is partly due to the decision to procure vaccines through the EU scheme, which has been hit by setbacks and delays.

However, while people in Ireland are desperate for more access to jabs, accepting supplies from the UK would be a bitter pill to swallow.

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As anyone who’s studied 20th-century history should know, the Brits and the Irish have had a fraught relationship at times...

Although some users were willing to make the sacrifice required for the chance of a restriction-free summer:

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is facing calls to immediately start donating vaccine supplies to poorer nations, where frontline workers are still exposed to Covid-19.

In a letter to the prime minister, a group of health and development charities urged Johnson to take “accelerated action” and to “swiftly clarify” how doses will be shared with other countries - as the UK is expected to have more than 100 million surplus doses.

“There is, therefore, the high risk that the UK will be hoarding limited supply whilst health workers and the most vulnerable in low and middle-income countries do not have access,” the letter reads.

“The UK will be sitting on enough surplus vaccine doses to vaccinate the world's frontline health workers twice over.”

In response, the government said that it would share “the majority of any future surplus” vaccines with the Covax initiative, which is working to provide vaccines to poorer countries when it is possible to do so.

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