A WEST Belfast GP is urging people who have yet to receive their Covid jab to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
 
Dr Michael McKenna was speaking after only 154 young people availed of a pop-up vaccination centre in the Falls Park on Tuesday where 500 tickets for the Féile dance night were to be given out to those receiving their first dose of the vaccine.

It comes in a week when, after an initial slow start, the Republic of Ireland has overtaken the North in the number of people now fully vaccinated.
 
Speaking to the Andersonstown News Dr McKenna said that the majority of people who are ending up in ICU "do not have a vaccine".

"Those figures are sitting at just under the 70 per cent mark," he said.
 
“We know that as long as people remain unvaccinated that hospital admissions will stay at a high level and we are still seeing the number of admissions going up in recent days.
 
“The number of positive diagnosis remains high and there has been an impact in West Belfast where we are in the top ten of high diagnosis within the BT12 postcode.”
 
The latest figures from the Department of Health show that there was over 2,000 positive cases across Belfast within the last week.
 
Of those cases 798 were in West Belfast, 451 were in North Belfast, 445 in East Belfast and 327 in the south of the city.
 
BT12 and BT13, which encompass parts of the Falls and Clonard areas are among the highest rates of positive cases in the North.
 
However, Dr McKenna doesn’t feel that this tells the full story.

“You also have to look at the number of people being tested,” he continued.
 
“I suspect that not everybody with symptoms is being tested as people often don’t want to believe that their symptoms might be Covid and they believe that they just have a cold.
 
“Often GPs are having conversations with people who clearly have symptoms but haven’t thought about getting a Covid test or don’t want to get a Covid test, possibly because they do not want to self-isolate.”
 
Detailing the impact that Covid has had on his surgery during the latest wave, Dr McKenna added: “I have people contacting me regularly, both vaccinated and unvaccinated who are testing positive but I am seeing hospital admissions within the unvaccinated cohort and sadly we have had a death of a patient who was unvaccinated.”

While initially, the North of Ireland had seen some of the highest uptake of the vaccine across the island of Ireland and the UK, latest figures show that we are now lagging behind with just under 84 per cent of the adult population having received at least a first dose of the vaccine as opposed to 88.7 per cent for the whole of the UK and 87.3 per cent for the Republic of Ireland. The Republic now has 72.4 per cent of its adult population fully vaccinated compared to a UK average of 72.1 per cent.
 
This slowdown in uptake can be seen in part as a result of vaccine hesitancy associated with misinformation on social media.
 
Appealing directly to those who are hesitant about the vaccine, Dr McKenna said: “I would encourage people to get their information from a trusted resource outside of Facebook and social media.
 
“If they have concerns about the vaccine, then they should have a conversation with a health professional and seek reassurance from the health sector as opposed to social media and friends. Often the messages on social media can be tainted with misinformation.”