Why has Ireland, one of the most vaccinated countries got one of the highest infection rates?

[Brendan Burgess]

Good article by Paul Cullen

Covid conundrum: Why is Ireland worse off than most of western Europe?

Starting from high base, increased mixing indoors and waning immunity are key factors

www.irishtimes.com

It isn’t easy to explain why Ireland, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, also has one of the highest rates of Covid-19 infection.

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In summary, what we are seeing now is the result of increased social mixing, mostly indoors, affecting those with no or reduced protection through natural or vaccine-induced immunity.

 

[michaelm]

Perhaps Ireland is currently doing more testing that many other countries? The sustained case numbers suggest that we will all get Covid at some point and that the vaccines are not the panacea the Government had hoped. Unfortunately the Government has failed to sufficiently ramp up hospital bed and ICU capacity over the last 20 months and as a result we are facing the prospect of hospitals being overrun. Talk of Covid passes for barbers or wherever is just Government pantomime.

 

[odyssey06]

I think it's a factor of our late opening up & level of testing.
Our late opening up means less natural immunity but when the cases do hit it is in a largely vaccinated community.
Our high vaccination percentage means the relationship of cases to hospitalisations and ICU is reduced.
In countries on the continent, the vaccination percentage is significantly less than here, they have higher ICU capacity than we do but even that is reaching its limits in Germany, and we see curfews in Netherlands, lockdown of the unvaccinated in Austria.
Our extra vaccination percentage is 'worth' extra ICU beds in this battle, II don't know how many, 20, 50 ...

Realistically in the timeframe of this pandemic the government focused on the more tractable aspect - getting people vaccinated rather than the deeper issues with hugely increasing ICU capacity (which was increased by 50?).