The leader of Hertfordshire County Council has paid tribute to the "enormous amount of diligence and sacrifices" made by residents during the current lockdown.

Addressing the county's Cabinet meeting this week councillor David Williams also spoke of his huge pride in the work being done to secure the vaccinations of residents.

Cabinet chair Williams said he wanted to mention the council's response and the impact on the county since lockdown. He addressed the meeting as it discussed the authority's response to Covid.

He said: "Driven by the Kent variant, the Herts Coronavirus incident rate peaked at 910 case per 100,000 population per seven days on the January 4. As at the seven days to the February 16, this rate has fallen to 100.5.

"So this represents an enormous amount of diligence and sacrifices on the part of Hertfordshire's residents, employers and the public sector and the voluntary and community services.

"I really must express my thanks to everybody who has contributed to this effort to bring down the incidence rate and indeed then the sacrifices that people have made over this period.

"One important initiative was the introduction of rapid testing on 20th of January. I visited the site at the Healthy Hub at the Gordon Craig Theatre in Stevenage on Thursday (Feb 18) where one of these sites is available.

"And this is really important now for those people who are not symptomatic with Coronavirus but, nevertheless, their work takes them out into the community and they are unable to stay at home during that period during the working day. And so there is a real wish that this becomes part of their regular routine to get rapid tests.

"The final thing I just want to touch upon, work has been done to support the clinically extremely vulnerable during lockdown. And as we look forward now we know the government is going to be redefining those who should be considered extremely vulnerable.

"It's likely, our expectiation is, the cohort of such residents will grow by about 12,000 over the coming weeks. And there's an important requirement to respond to that as best we can."

Speaking of the progress being made on vaccinations in the county, councillor Williams said: "This has been an absolutely huge effort which the public sector across Hertfordshire has been very much involved in.

"I am hugely proud of the work that is being done in order to secure the vaccinations of our residents in cohorts 1-4 and as we look forwards now, we will see our residents in 5-9 vaccinated over the coming months."