ALL care home workers ought to be vaccinated against the coronavirus in the next two weeks, industry leaders urged today.

And Labour joined the call as Boris Johnson reported that “virtually all” elderly care home residents had received their first coronavirus vaccine or been given an appointment for it.

The Prime Minister claimed he was “confident that we have the supplies” to ensure that people would receive their second jab within the government’s 12-week timetable.

Labour’s shadow social care minister Liz Kendall said that it was very good news, but that it is crucial to get care home workers vaccinated within the next fortnight.

The names of the 230 known NHS and social care workers who have died with Covid-19 were published by PA Media today. Twenty-two of those named had worked in care homes.

Ms Kendall said: “It is essential that ministers now do everything possible to ensure care home staff take up their vaccines, move swiftly to vaccinate care homes for people with disabilities and, crucially, homecare staff who care for elderly and disabled people in their own homes.

“We are in a race against time against this awful virus, and ministers must leave no stone overturned [sic] to vaccinate all social care staff within the next two weeks.”

Social care junior minister Helen Whately said that vaccination teams are continuing to work their way through the workforce. 

“We are determined by February 15 to have offered the vaccine to all the social care workforce,” she said.

But ensuring everyone working in the care sector is offered a coronavirus vaccine over the next two weeks is a “big, big task,” the executive director of the National Care Forum said.

Vic Rayner told Sky News that just 27 per cent of forum member organisations had had 70 per cent or more of their staff vaccinated as of early last week, adding that access to vaccinations was the main issue.

“The priority over the next two weeks is to get the vaccine out to 1.6 million people who work across care,” she said.

Some care home staff are refusing the Covid-19 vaccine, the National Care Association’s executive chairman Nadra Ahmed said.

She warned that part of the problem is access to appointments and limited supply of vaccines, while another is cultural issues. 

“We have to convince people that this vaccine is for them,” he said. “That it’s for the staff to protect them and therefore protect the services they work in.”