She will receive the vaccine today.
A 79-year-old Dublin woman will become the first person in Ireland to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.
The grandmother of 10, named Annie, will receive the Pfizer/BioNTech this afternoon, December 29, in St James's Hospital, Dublin.
Annie, who lost her husband in October, said she is "delighted" and "privileged" to be the first person in the Republic of Ireland to receive the jab.
Head of Ireland's vaccine task force, Professor Brian MacCraith, said this morning that the country's vaccine doses will be administered as quickly as possible.
“This is a momentous day," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland. "It is the beginning of a complex process, the beginning of the end of an awful period."
Prof MacCraith added that his team expressed caution in administering the first vaccine to ensure they had enough quantities to give the second dose.
"Because the second dose is so important, we are not leaving anything to chance," he said. “We want to get to a situation where we can use the 40,000 doses as soon as possible.”
10,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine arrived in Ireland on St Stephen's Day.
The first vaccines will be administered in four hospitals: St James's and Beaumont hospitals in Dublin, Cork University Hospital, and University Hospital Galway.
Prof MacCraith said it is "very possible we will complete all vaccinations of nursing homes by February," and that the rest of the country could be vaccinated against the virus by August.
"It'll be down to the manufacturing success of the companies, the delivery schedules," he said. "But certainly if all things come to pass, one would be looking at [August].
"We're expecting that that regularity [of supply[ will happen, and we're getting more and more reassurances from Pfizer.
"In the coming weeks we will be growing the numbers. We will never hold back vaccines in storage, we will use vaccines as soon as we have availability."
