Local health bosses have praised a “phenomenal achievement” after a third of Lincolnshire’s eligible population were vaccinated against coronavirus.
Lincolnshire County Council’s director of public health Derek Ward said the latest good news regarding coronavirus included around 55,000 rapid PCR tests carried out a week, as well as a further 16,000 asymptomatic tests completed so far.
The county’s infection rate also continues to fall, with Lincolnshire currently hovering around 120 per 100,000 population — one of the lowest in the whole of the Midlands, compared to the England average of 158.
Mr Ward said “broadly speaking” around 200,000 people had been vaccinated, compared to 630,000 of the population over 60.
“It’s really positive news, getting through a third of the eligible people in the couple of months since we’ve been vaccinating, considering we were starting from scratch, is a phenomenal achievement,” he said.
The government confirmed on Monday that those over the age of 65 and the clinically vulnerable were now being offered the coronavirus vaccine.
Professor Ward said the challenge now was to vaccinate the same number of people in the new priority groups alongside beginning to offer the second doses for people in the first group.
“It’s another big challenge for the system, but we’re up to it and you can see that in the numbers,” he added.
He did warn the county was “not going to see zero infection rates” anytime soon, and current concerns included workplace outbreaks. However, he added: “We’ve got a really good system in place, so we will respond.”
He said the figures were going in the right direction for lockdown to end by May, but the rate of decrease is “slowing”.
“So we’ve got to be really careful as we open up businesses that we don’t see a big explosion in cases in workplaces,” he said.
“The next step is to open schools at the right time, but it’s important when we do to have couple of weeks before we do anything else, so we can be clear whether that is driving infections.
“If it’s not, then we move on to the next part. If there’s a sudden spike in cases […] we can go backwards on that particular sector.”
He added: “We can keep it a good news story by staying at home during lockdown, and when you do go out, stick by the hands, face, space rules to make sure we can get back to normal as soon as possible.”
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A 38-year-old man from a North Lincolnshire village charged with murder will face an eight-day trial later this year.
Emergency services were called at 4.23am on Saturday, July 2 to reports that a man was seriously injured on South Parade in central Doncaster.
The 28-year-old victim was taken to hospital but was sadly pronounced dead a short time later.
A post-mortem examination found that he died of injuries to his head, chest and abdomen.
Formal identification of the victim is yet to take place, South Yorkshire Police said earlier this week.
Steven Ling, 38, of Park Drain, Westwoodside in North Lincolnshire, has been charged with murder and was remanded in custody to appear at Doncaster Magistrates Court on Monday, July 4.
Ling later appeared at Sheffield Crown Court on Tuesday, July 5 for a plea and trial preparation hearing.
No pleas were entered during the hearing, but an eight-day trial was set for November 28, 2022. Ling has now been remanded into custody until the next hearing.
The Lincolnite went on a ride-along with a Lincolnshire Police officer from the force’s Roads Policing Unit (RPU), which aims to disrupt criminals’ use of the roads and reduce the number of serious and fatal accidents.
The team will support the county response including local policing, neighbourhood policing and criminal investigation too.
Operations first began in Grantham in January this year and started in Louth earlier this week with a sergeant and nine PCs based in both locations.
The Lincolnite went out on a ride-along with PC Rich Precious from Lincolnshire Police’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
PC Rich Precious has been a police officer for 22 years after joining the force in 2000 and he recently rejoined the Roads Policing Unit, working out of Louth.
PC Precious, who also previously worked as a family liaison officer for road deaths for 16 years, took The Lincolnite out in his police car to the A1 up to Colsteworth and then back to Grantham. He described that particular area as “one of the main arterial routes that goes through Lincolnshire”.
PC Rich Precious driving down the A1 up to Colsterworth. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
Speaking about the new Roads Policing Unit, he said: “It’s intelligence led policing, it’s targeted policing in areas that have been underrepresented in terms of police presence, on the roads certainly, over a number of years.
“We’re hoping that the development of this unit will help address that balance, and look towards using the ANPR system to prevent criminals’ use of the road, and to identify key areas or routes where there’s a high percentage of people killed or seriously injured on the road, what we commonly refer to as KSI.
PC Precious is helping to keep the roads safer in Lincolnshire. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
When asked if he thinks the new team will help reduce the number of serious and fatal accidents in the county, he added: “That’s what the the unit designed for. Sadly, in Lincolnshire our road network does seem to incur a number of those KSI accidents year on year, and we need to reduce that.
“I’ve worked additionally in my roles as a family liaison officer on road death for 16 years, so I’ve seen first hand the impact that road death has on families and victims families.
“I know it’s important that we try and reduce those because, it’s very sad to see how a fatal road traffic collision can affect a family and the victims of that family.”
Marc Gee, Inspector for Lincolnshire Police’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
Marc Gee, Inspector for the Roads Policing Unit, told The Lincolnite: “Every day there will be officers on duty from both teams and they’ll cover the whole county or the county’s roads.
“Eventually, we’ll have nine police cars and we’ve got six motorbikes. We’ll be utilising them with as many officers as we can every day basically to make our roads safer and enforce against the criminals who feel like it’s okay to come into the county and use our road for criminal purposes.”
Lincolnshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Marc Jones at the launch of the force’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
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