Welsh Government hits care home vaccine target

Every elderly care home resident in Wales has been offered a Covid-19 vaccination, the Welsh Government has announced.

Eluned Morgan, minister for mental health, wellbeing and Welsh language, said more than 416,000 people have now had their first dose of the vaccine, which is 13% of the population.

Public Health Wales said 74.5% of those over 80 have received their first dose, along with 75.1% of care home residents and 79.1% of care home staff.

“All older person care homes have either received visits from vaccination teams or visits are planned,” Ms Morgan told the Welsh Government briefing.

“Where visits have not taken place yet, it is because there have been live Covid cases in the last 20 days.

“The vaccination teams will visit these homes as soon as the public health advice allows.

“I want to thank everyone who is working so hard to provide vaccines to everyone who needs them.

“Every vaccine delivered is a small victory against the virus.”

Ms Morgan said that with more and more elderly care home residents being vaccinated it was possible the regulations around families visiting their loved ones could be relaxed in the coming weeks.

“We have put very clear guidance in place to support care homes in allowing people to visit loved ones,” she said.

“We’ve got to get the balance on this right because we have to protect those people in care homes from the virus.

“With the vaccine being rolled out in care homes now, then in a few weeks’ time it will be easier for us to allow people to visit.

“But for the time being, because we know that it takes about three weeks for the vaccine to work, we would encourage people to make sure that they stick to the regulations that we’ve put in place around visiting care homes.”

Meanwhile, there have been a further 630 cases of coronavirus in Wales, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 192,912.

Public Health Wales reported another 21 deaths, taking the total in Wales since the start of the pandemic to 4,775.