Lincolnshire's experiencing the highest number of covid outbreaks since the pandemic started.

Care homes and schools are the main hotspots.

Author: Hannah NorburyPublished 19th Nov 2020
Last updated 19th Nov 2020

Health bosses in Lincolnshire are dealing with more covid outbreaks than they have experienced the whole pandemic, with care homes and schools being the main hotspots.

It was reported on the 17th November that figures from Lincolnshire County Council show 204 outbreaks including:

61 care homes out of 283

95 schools out of 393 schools/colleges

52 community outbreaks covering everything else including hospitals, factories, businesses and small offices

Tony Mcginty, the deputy director of Public Health England said:

"It's pretty clear Lincolnshire is having a harder time with covid-19 in this second wave, than we did in the first wave."

"What tends to then happen for us, is that we see the virus making it through the defences of the organisations that are trying to keep operating and trying to keep it out and that's when we have these types of outbreaks."

"We are running at about 200 incidents of outbreaks today (17th November), that number changes because places go into outbreaks and come back out when they get the situation back under control."

"The main sites we are looking at are schools, because we are trying to keep children in school at the moment and care homes, because those people are particularly vulnerable and we are trying to keep them as safe as we can."

"We have a whole range of other outbreaks from a couple of people in a solicitors office to a bigger number in a big food factory, it's quite a diverse range of places having problems."

"We are undoubtedly running far higher infection rates and have far bigger number of cases than we did before the lockdown, so we're definitely in a more difficult position than we were."

"I don't think tier systems will be the same as they were before, we should know in a week or so from government what the new system will look like."

"I don't think their measures will be the same on the other side of this lockdown."

The average rate in Lincolnshire is currently 299 per every 100,000.

The two places with the highest rates at the moment are the Boston Borough Council and the East Lindsey District Council areas.

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