Army personnel providing important support at new Athlone vaccination centre
The mass vaccination centre at Athlone IT opened on Wednesday, April 21, for those aged 65-69, with the operation receiving significant support from the Defence Forces.
Personnel are in charge of various behind-the-scenes logistical matters, and are central to the smooth running of the vaccination programme.
2nd Lieutenant Dylan O’Byrne, Facility Manager at the vaccination centre at the AIT International Arena, explained the work that he and his troops carry out.
“Currently at the centre in Athlone there are six personnel deployed, including myself,” he said.
“The Defence Forces provides a facility manager and the five other personnel who are involved in both the stores and the pharmacy.”
“I’m the facility manager so I liaise with all the outside staffing. I co-ordinate and assist the HSE, security, cleaning, waste management etc. We ensure the site vaccination booths are ready at all times so we make sure that they are fully stocked.”
Personnel play a crucial role in the stocking and storage of all equipment required for the vaccine programme.
“We rollout the vaccine from the stores to the booths and they are then administered by HSE staff,” Dylan explains.
“We manage the stores and stock control of the consumables which would be the PPE, hand sanitizer and syringes. We also make up the trays which vaccinators use in the booth, and they include the needles, the vials which the vaccine is contained in, and a few other bits.”
Once the vaccine has been administered, the troops are responsible for management and accountancy of the empty vaccine vials.
“We log the outgoing vials on the system and log them again when they come back to us, and we’re then responsible for the disposal of them.
“Overall, we’re very much on the logistical side of things to help the HSE.”
The Defence Forces have been playing a role in the fight against Covid-19 and troops required little training at for the vaccination centre.
“When Covid first came, all troops across the Defence Forces received Covid awareness briefs and we’ve been heavily involved in assisting with the crisis this past year.
“We’ve had personnel swabbing, we’ve been involved in patient transfers and with PPE collection. We would have had a lot of training under our belts already, so we only had a few little things to get up to speed with for the vaccination centre but on a whole we were ready to go from day one.”
Finishing, Dylan, speaking on the centre’s second day of vaccinating the public, said “everything is running smoothly and we’ve really gotten off to a great start.”