Lincolnshire’s covid situation is a ‘concern’ with tier announcement just days away

Chief Medical Officer for England Professor Chris Whitty has admitted he has concerns that coronavirus cases are not falling in parts of Lincolnshire.

The medical chief named the county along with parts of London, Essex and Kent as places where cases are not falling as consistently as other parts of England in the national briefing yesterday, Thursday, December 10.

As a result, he did say ministers would have to look at whether “more” restrictions are brought into these places when the review takes place on December 16.

The latest figures show Lincoln and Boston still have significantly high infection rates over the last seven day period.

That is likely to raise serious doubt over whether the county will be pulled out of tier three for Christmas.

However, Lincolnshire’s health bosses have refused to speculate on the government’s imminent decision over tiering next week.

The county is currently under tier 3, the highest, and chiefs previously warned people needed to stick to the lockdown rules as the government is due to take a snapshot of the most recent data in the next few days.

Lincolnshire County Council’s director of public health Derek Ward said it was expected the data would include the days up to the middle of the week.

However, he said: “I’m not going to speculate. I didn’t in the first instance, I’m not going to do it at any point. We will be where we are based on the Prime Minister’s ultimate decision.”

He said the data showed the country and Lincolnshire had been on a downward trend since mid-November.

However, he noted that where nationally the infection rate had flattened out and in some areas had started rising, Lincolnshire was continuing downwards.

The county, however, remains above the England average of 153 cases per 100,000 population at 239.4.

At a district level Lincoln and Boston remain a concern with the county’s capital now taking the top spot in local infection rates.

Health bosses’ own data shows Lincoln has an infection rate of 490, while Boston sits at 350.

Professor Ward said, however that many of Lincoln’s cases were in specific locations. For example 150 of the most recent 480 cases in the city were staff and patients in care homes.

He confirmed there was also an outbreak at Lincoln prison.