The Health Minister says the vaccine rollout programme is not a race to the end of June.
Stephen Donnelly says he believes 82 per cent of the adult population will have been vaccinated by then, but he doesn’t want people to be fixated by that date.
The programme received a boost yesterday after the Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca injections were approved for use in the over 50s.
Minister Donnelly - who misreferenced June 31st - says it means the vaccine rollout remains on track.
"The vaccine programme is not about a race to the 31st of June.
"It just so happens that based not he supplies coming in, if they agreed to come in was agreed with the pharmaceutical companies, then four in every 5 adults who wants a vaccine can be offered a vaccine by the end of June.
"But there's no magic about the 31st of June, on the first of July we'll still be vaccinating, we'll be doing tens of thousands of people."
