January 26, 2021 2.03 am This story is over 38 months old

Lincolnshire COVID infection rates are “bouncing around all over the place”

Boston and South Holland spiked over the weekend
Blue = 100-199 cases / Dark blue = 200-399 cases as of Jan 20.

COVID infection rates in Lincolnshire are “bouncing around all over the place” after Boston and South Holland saw spikes in the past few days.

Boston went from 168.2 coronavirus cases per 100,000 of the population on Friday to 205.2 on Monday this week. This has been due to a “strong uptake of community-wide testing” in the borough, namely the two new rapid testing centres in the town.

South Holland also saw a slight increase from 297.8 to 301 in the past three days, while all other Greater Lincolnshire districts saw a fall in their infection rates.

Tony McGinty, Assistant Director of Public Health at Lincolnshire County Council, said: “There’s all sorts of reasons why the numbers are bouncing around all over the place. We brought a lot of additional testing in the last few weeks.

“We’re just starting to do additional testing for frontline workers as well in line with the government’s plans for those people who can’t walk down and have to carry on going to work.”

He added: “We are of course, still seeing outbreaks cropping up in certain settings, and some of them with quite a lot of numbers of cases in them. So all sorts of things are still making our numbers quite volatile.”

“There’s nothing in particular of concern going on in Boston at the moment, although we had a really strong uptake of community-wide testing in Boston when it started, and we were running positivity rates of asymptomatic of about one and a half or 2% of the total of people being tested. Obviously, that added to the overall numbers for Boston.”

Greater Lincolnshire’s infection rates from Jan 18 to Jan 25. | Data: Gov UK / Table: James Mayer for The Lincolnite

On Monday, January 18, two mass rapid testing sites opened in Boston, one at the Peter Paine Performance Centre on Rosebery Avenue and the other at the Tollfield Campus Haven High on Tollfield Road.

Last Monday, South Holland jumped to the top of the table for highest Greater Lincolnshire infection rate which was put down to 100 cases at two care homes. Now the district is second in the table, with Lincoln at the top spot.