All care homes given first dose
Slough: Rollout of COVID-19 vaccination well under way
The vaccination of all care home residents and staff in Slough against COVID-19 is expected to be completed by the end of this week.
The rollout of the NHS vaccination programme has been underway since December to protect the town’s most vulnerable people from the virus.
Tracey Faraday-Drake, from the NHS Frimley Collaborative of Clinical Commissioning Groups, updated the council’s outbreak engagement board about the progress on Tuesday evening.
She said: “We’ve pretty much completed the care homes and care home staff.
“They were our priority groups to start with and probably by the end of this week we will have done all the care homes and care home staff as well.
“That’s really important to keep people safe.”
GPs, practice nurses and community pharmacists are continuing to administer the life-saving jabs at Slough’s community COVID-19 vaccine hub based at the Salt Hill Activity Centre.
Ms Faraday-Drake added ‘good progress’ is being made to vaccinate the town’s vulnerable groups and frontline health workers.
The meeting also heard how Slough’s infection rate currently stands at 1059.9 cases per 100,000 people.
The rate of cases in the over 60s remains high with 1019.9 cases per 100,000 people in this age group.
Public health representative Sue Foley said: “The over 60 rate is very high still and unfortunately that tends to push into people being hospitalised so that’s of great concern.
“There’s a thought that people who go into hospital are all old and that’s fine.
“But that’s obviously not fine and we’re finding that they are getting a bit younger.”
She added that most new cases of the virus in the South East are now of the new COVID-19 variant.
■ Meanwhile a Thames Hospice worker has become the 10,000th person to receive a COVID vaccine at Wexham Park Hospital. Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Slough hospital along with Heatherwood in Ascot and Frimley Park in Surrey, posted a photo on Facebook of the milestone. The Trust called it a ‘fantastic achievement’ for its team, which has been ‘working so hard to protect people’.