Coronavirus figures in Lincolnshire paint a bleak picture after a national data issue saw a steep rise over the past week, but local health bosses remain “unconcerned”.
The number of cases doubled across the county overall after the problem which saw the government’s Microsoft Excel spreadsheet unable to handle the surge in case numbers.
In some areas such as West Lindsey case numbers have even tripled.
However, Lincolnshire County Council’s Assistant Director of Public Health Tony McGinty said: “We are still relatively low risk compared to most other areas and a lot of the jump in infection rates and numbers of cases has been explained by the general national increases.
“So I’m not concerned there’s something in particular going on in Lincolnshire; we’re not catching up with or overtaking areas that have got higher infection rates, but clearly our numbers are going up.”
Here’s how each district’s case numbers have increased in the past seven days:
Boston: 12 to 17 cases
East Lindsey: 16 to 28
Lincoln: 25 to 75
North Kesteven: 13 to 38
South Holland: 10 to 19
South Kesteven: 22 to 60
West Lindsey: 22 to 60
Mr McGinty said he understood people’s frustrations at the various changes in data collection since the pandemic began — including the sudden inclusion of Pillar Two (community testing) data, which saw a massive jump in figures, and changes to the way deaths were recorded, which saw a chunk cut out of the data.
“I completely understand that people’s confidence in what they’re hearing is going to be undermined if we keep having problems, but what I would say to people, is in many ways the trends are more important than the absolute numbers on any given day.
“The glitch like the one we saw on Friday, whilst it was serious, didn’t fundamentally change the picture of the trend that we were seeing, and it was corrected quite quickly.”
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Exciting news for MyLocal app users and The Lincolnite readers! Our latest update is now available to download from your app store and comes packed with the best local news experience you can enjoy.
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