HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid has said Ireland is "well on track" to complete 80,000 vaccinations this week.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, Mr Reid said the HSE is continuing to vaccinate according to the level of supply being delivered to the country and 50% of the Moderna vaccine delivery is "held back for dose two".
When asked why the European Centre for Disease Control has not been made aware of the number of doses that have arrived in Ireland, Mr Reid said there was "an error along the way in terms of the supply of data".
"But there is certainly is no inconsistency for us in being able to track what is received in, or being able to track what we distribute or being able to track what is being vaccinated in any given week," he added.
The HSE has said that data from Ireland on the number of Covid-19 doses delivered to the country so far has been resubmitted to the ECDC's TESSy reporting system and will be published on the ECDC website.
It follows media queries this week as to why Ireland's data on doses delivered was listed as "missing" on website.
Mr Reid also said current figures for this week show that 95% of supply lines are being vaccinated.
He said the rate of decline in cases is "concerning" and it appears that the rate of transmission levels of the Covid-19 variant is having a "significant impact".
Speaking at this afternoon's HSE briefing, Mr Reid said they continue to see "good trends" in relation to "all measures" of the virus.
"The pace of which we are exiting this wave is a lot slower than the scale and pace that we entered," he said, adding that he believes this will be a feature of how the country exits this current wave.
"It will be longer and stickier and not at the pace that any of us would want or like."
Mr Reid said hospitals are seeing impacts of "higher transmission of B117 variant" in longer lengths of stay.
He said he appreciates the frustration that many people have in relation to the number of vaccinations administered and said that "no one more than those of us in the HSE would like to see more being done every week".
The HSE's Chief Clinical Lead for Covid-19 said there is a possible reduction in the effectiveness of the vaccine against the variant that was first discovered in South Africa.
Dr Colm Henry said not as much is known about the variant discovered in Brazil "apart from the increased transmission".
He said all vaccines continue to show effectiveness against serious disease.
Mr Reid said the number of people admitted to hospital for Covid-19 has fallen by 25% in the last week.
He said there are currently 771 patients with Covid-19 in hospital, with 148 of those in ICU and 200 receiving advanced respiratory care on hospital wards.
Mr Reid said 68% of last week's Covid-19 cases were close contacts of confirmed cases, which he said was a "cause of concern".
HSE's Paul Reid says 68% of last week's Covid-19 cases were close contacts of confirmed cases which, he says, is a "cause of concern" | https://t.co/Qi51ZMJ82M pic.twitter.com/jqCqVEx2sb
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) February 18, 2021
He said positively rates in the community testing sites range from 16% to 20%.
"It indicates to us that the levels we are at in the community are still a concern. The virus is still transmitting at a very risky level across the community," he said.
In relation to vaccine roll-out, Mr Reid said where there are vials of vaccines leftover in a GP practice when all 85s and over are done, they can draw from other age groups within the 80-84 age group.
He said it will also be possible to vaccinate a younger spouse or partner of someone who is 85 years but they must be over 75.
Mr Reid said they are also working on clarity around how they will get access to people who are not able to get to vaccination centres.
They are currently looking at the list to see how many are involved and they are looking to see what transportation they can put in place through the Defence Forces and local authorities in conjunction with the national ambulance services and GPs. He said that that was similar for hospitals.
Mr Reid said an important milestone will be reached next week, when the vast majority of residents and staff of long-term residential facilities would be vaccinated.
He said that they would have to go back to some based in places where there had been outbreaks and people had been sick.
At the same briefing, HSE Chief Operating Officer Anne O'Connor said there were 524 outbreaks across acute and long-term residential care settings.
HSE's Chief Operating officer, Anne O'Connor says there are 524 Covid-19 outbreaks across acute and long term residential care settings | https://t.co/Qi51ZMJ82M pic.twitter.com/4kUWbq6wF8
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) February 18, 2021
Ms O'Connor said these include 148 acute hospital outbreaks compared to 145 last week. She said the number of staff affected by these outbreaks has reduced significantly.
She added: "173 staff against 502 the week before. So that's a very significant reduction in terms of the number of positive cases detected among staff in our acute hospitals."
Ms O'Connor said the HSE will face a significant challenge in dealing with waiting lists, with 624,000 people awaiting a procedure.
She said there were just under 557,000 people on a waiting list in January of 2020, with an increase in the number of people awaiting colonoscopies.
"There was a very significant increase in that waiting list from February last year onward. This is a procedure that we would be very cautious about," she said.
Earlier, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said the Government is expecting to receive at least one million Covid-19 vaccine doses per month in April, May and June.
This would represent a tripling in the pace of vaccination during the second quarter of the year, compared to the first three months.
It comes as the death toll from the virus passed the 4,000 mark yesterday.
The Department of Health confirmed a further 57 deaths, as well as 650 additional cases.
The total number of deaths now stands at 4,036, while the cumulative total of cases since the pandemic began stands at 211,751.
As the roll-out of GP vaccinations of the over 85s gathers pace, the protection given by even one dose of vaccine may already be impacting on the official data.
By last Sunday 102,000 vaccine doses were given to residents and staff in nursing homes.
The latest vaccine figures show that up to Monday, 15 February, there were 280,581 total doses of Covid-19 vaccines given. Of these 182,193 were first doses and 98,388 were second doses.
The breakdown was Pfizer-BioNTech: 261,968; AstraZeneca: 15,198; and Moderna: 3,415.
The disease incidence among the over-85s fell by 57% last week alone - by far the highest reduction for any age group.
Healthcare workers accounted for 166,000 vaccine doses and by the end of last week they were accounting for 5% of weekly cases, down from 13% three weeks earlier.
To date more than three-quarters of healthcare workers who tested positive were women.
In line with the decline in those infections, men are now outnumbering women in the daily case count for the first time since the pandemic began.
Additional reporting George Lee
