59-year olds can register for a Covid-19 vaccine from this morning

The latest figures show more than 1.5 million jabs have been administered in Ireland up to Saturday, including 1.1 million first doses.

It comes as 453 new infections were recorded here yesterday, which brings the State's total number of cases since the start of the pandemic to over a quarter of a million.

More than 10 percent of people who were diagnosed with the virus are now suffering from Long Covid.

Public health expert Professor Anthony Staines of DCU says the question of how long their symptoms will last is still unknown to medical science:

"No one really knows how long these cases will run for. With the other chronic viral fatigue syndromes, they often last two, three years. This virus is not like the viruses that goes the other chronic fatigue syndrome which have been described, and the biology of this syndrome is different, we don't really know, hopefully a year or two, most people will make a good recovery. That's a hope and unfortunately not a prediction."