August 14, 2020 10.28 am This story is over 43 months old

22 COVID-19 cases in Lincolnshire from Newark factory

Family of workers also infected
The Bakkavor Deserts site in Newark recently saw an outbreak of coronavirus cases. Photo: Google Street View

A COVID-19 outbreak in a Newark factory has resulted in 22 people in Lincolnshire so far testing positive for the virus.

The latest figures from Bakkavor, Nottinghamshire County Council and Public Health England have seen more than 50 of the 1,600 employees come back positive according to Lincolnshire’s health bosses.

Of those, 19 are workers who live in the county and commute, and three further family members have been infected.

Lincolnshire County Council’s director of public health Professor Derek Ward said: “I’m comfortable and confident that the factory and Public Health England are managing it appropriately. I do expect we’ll see some more positives over the coming week or two.”

“We will continue to see outbreaks around the around the edges of the county such as here [Nottinghamshire] and Northamptonshire – another neighbouring county.

“We might also see outbreaks within the county and I’ll be a lot more directly involved with leading that response along with Public Health.”

The national COVID-19 dashboard was not updated yesterday with a statement saying the government “have not received the latest data for cases and tests in England”.

Death figures were also due to be updated to include local revised numbers, however, the page was removed from the dashboard to be “re-developed”.

The current total for Lincolnshire is 2,582 cases, 148 hospital deaths and 323 government reported deaths of people from the region (including those which were recorded outside of the county’s hospitals).

Mr Ward confirmed that 6,120 tests were carried out in the seven days to August 11 with 26 confirmed positives.