HEALTH Secretary Matt Hancock praises Slough for vaccinating all of their care homes during the daily Downing Street coronavirus conference.

On Monday’s press conference, Mr Hancock praised the speed and efficiency of all areas in England on giving out the vaccine, using Slough as a shining example.

He said: “There are some parts where the vast majority of octogenarians have been vaccinated and there are some places – for instance Slough – who have vaccinated all of their care home residents.

“And so, I want to thank all those who’ve been doing this enormous task and in particular Slough, and other places around the country, who have reached the critical goal of making sure that everybody in a care home can be vaccinated.”

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At last week’s Slough Outbreak Engagement Board, it was heard that the borough was expecting to vaccinate all care home residents and staff by the end of last week.

The next stage for the borough will be starting to move on to vaccinating the over 70s, and those under 70 who are clinically extremely vulnerable from January 18.

At Monday’s cabinet meeting, lead members gave thanks to all the hardworking staff at the vaccination hubs for distributing the coronavirus jab.

The leader of the council, councillor James Swindlehurst (Labour: Cippenham Green), said: “We are chugging away through vaccines at a much higher rate than most of our neighbouring health authorities.

“Every elderly Labour party member I speak to tell me that they’ve already had their vaccination when I speak to them on the phone.

“It does prove that on a practical level that it is definitely working its way through our vulnerable groups in terms of getting vaccines delivered and the testing programme is really being deployed rapidly and up to speed and starting now as well – which is great to see.”

READ MORE: Coronavirus in Berkshire round up - Monday, January 18

Councillor Natasa Pantelic (Labour: Cippenham Meadows), lead member for health and wellbeing, tweeted: “Fantastic to hear Matt Hancock praising Slough for vaccinating all care home residents at today’s Downing Street briefing.

“Quite right. A huge thank you and well done to everyone involved!”

Speaking at the Downing Street Conference, Matt Hancock announced over four million people have been vaccinated across the UK and are vaccinating more than double the rate – per person per day – than any other country in Europe.

Latest data show that the UK have now vaccinated more than half of those over 80 as well as half of elderly care home residents.