Man slapped with fine for Bracebridge Heath fly-tipping

Lincolnshire’s frontline police officers are being offered doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that are left over at the end of a day.

Lincolnshire Police’s force control room will be called each day with the offer of spare vaccines that weren’t used throughout the day.

This is due to the vaccine not being able to be stored overnight, which would otherwise waste the doses.

Rather than throw them away, the NHS will offer any leftover vaccine doses to local frontline response officers.

When officers are given the first dose, a date for the second dose is set.

Chief Inspector for the North and South Kesteven beat area, Phil Vickers, tweeted about the offers on Wednesday morning.

A spokesperson for Lincolnshire Police said: “A small number of our staff were vaccinated earlier this week after being offered vaccines that we were told could not be used.”

A man in his 40s was injured after an industrial incident in Holbeach on Wednesday morning.

Emergency services, along with an air ambulance, attended the scene of the incident on Park Road, which was reported to police at 10.47am on January 20.

The road was closed just after 11.30am.

Emergency services and an air ambulance attended the scene. | Photo: Dennis Vink

Police said the man’s injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.

No arrests have been made and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has been notified.

Six in ten new COVID cases in Lincolnshire were with the new, more infectious variant in the first week of 2021.

The county council’s public health team said that by January 8, 59.2% of tests contained a variant of the virus — up from 36% in the last two weeks of 2020.

North East Lincolnshire’s latest epidemiology report says 50% of positive COVID tests contained the new variant in the first two weeks of January, up from 40% at the end of December.

The new strains of COVID-19 are believed to be up to 70% more transmissible than the first circulating form of the virus.

Professor Derek Ward, Lincolnshire County Council’s director for public health, said he expected the new variants to “push the old one out”.

“At some point in the future 100% or 98% of our cases will be the new variants,” he said.

“The key point is the new variants are out there in South Africa and Brazil, but the key messages stay the same.

“It is a stay at home lockdown and it doesn’t matter which one it is, you’re not going to get it if you don’t go out the door, and, if you are going to have to go outdoors then remember hands, face, space.”

Pfizer said that their vaccine is effective against one key mutation, called N501Y, found in both of the new variants spreading in Britain and South Africa.

Meanwhile, under 70s could begin receiving the vaccine this week, as more than 4 million doses have been administered, the government said.