Covid vaccines 'starting to kick in'

An expert studying Covid-19 in Northern Ireland says the vaccination programme is giving scientists 'quite a lot of hope.'

Lindsey Broadbent is a Virologist at Queens University Belfast researching the body's immune response to Coronavirus.

She says she is 'cautiously optimistic' about the future, thanks to the Covid jabs.

"It's been an incredibly tough year for everybody.

"We've been in and out of lockdowns, we've seen awful news so to have the development of these vaccines and for the rollout to be going so well, it is really promising.

Vaccinators are currently working their way through the top six priority groups in Northern Ireland.

Yesterday the Health Minister said the R number has remained below one for a number of weeks now.

But Robin Swann did warn it is beginning to stagnate meaning hospital occupancy numbers 'may fall slowly.'

And there is growing concern around new variants of the virus.

The Kent or UK variant now accounts for 40-60% of new cases in Northern Ireland.

Lindsey said there is still cause for hope though:

"Data from other countries, specifically Israel who are leading the way in terms of the number of people they have vaccinated, they have definitely seen reductions in hospitalisations and deaths.

"That is huge that we're seeing that so early on after a vaccine has started to be administered.

"And it looks like we're staring to see the same thing now in the UK and in Northern Ireland, so we might be a couple of weeks behind Israel but we are starting to see that early evidence of vaccine efficacy and what an impact the vaccines could have," she said.

She added: " There is hope for the future of course, we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

"We have some fantastic things coming on board, the vaccine rollout is incredible, we have therapeutics being developed and we are now so much more aware of what we need to be cautious about."