Booster vaccines for the over 50s will be brought forward to the middle of December, Health Service Executive CEO Paul Reid has said.
It was planned that they would begin at the end of December. Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Reid said that from next week, booster vaccines wil be given to people who are medically vulnerable, which he said was around 470,000 people.
He said while hospitals remain stretched, actions taken last week to try to mitigate risk across the hospital system is helping by keeping the priority on urgent elective care and Covid cases.
As of this morning, there were 556 people with Covid-19 in hospital, down 32 on the same time yesterday. There were 126 patients in ICUs with the virus.