County health chiefs say there is no sign of the Indian variant of Covid-19, as the general trend in case numbers continues downwards.

This comes as around 15% of Lincolnshire's adult population is now fully vaccinated against coronavirus.

Lincolnshire County Council's assistant director for public health Andy Fox said the latest figures showed just under 100,000 people had received their second dose of COVID-19 vaccine – 97,984.

Government figures on Thursday showed that officially more than 500,000 doses of vaccine had been handed out in total with 82,659 of those being second jabs – a rise of more than 15,000

Meanwhile 66.6% of the population have had their first dose – more than 425,000.

Nationally, more than 10 million people have been fully vaccinated in the UK.

"We're really pleased with where we are with the vaccine in Lincolnshire," said Andy.

"We know that the NHS teams doing the vaccination has been focusing on the second dose recently so we've seen that go up from a few percent a few weeks ago to now we're 15% of  the adult population in Lincolnshire are fully vaccinated, which is again, really good to see."

Of those that have received their second dose, the highest numbers are in the 80-plus age group with 36,500 people, while 17,000 75-79-year-olds are fully vaccinated.

More than 93,000 people took a lateral flow test last week. The number was expected to go down due to schools – which normally do between 40-60,000 tests alone – being shut, however, it is thought to have been balanced out by people ordering new home testing kits.

There is currently no evidence of the Indian variant in Lincolnshire, confirmed Andy Fox, while the Kent variant is now the dominant strain at 90%.

Lincolnshire's infection rate continues to decrease, reaching 26.5 per 100,000, and now sitting below the England average of 26.8.

As Nub News has reported , despite fluctuations, the general trend for cases in South Kesteven is downwards, with the district only recording one death in more than three weeks.

Health bosses are not overly concerned by small rises at district level in Lincoln, or by Boston remaining high on the league table of infection rates.

Mr Fox said the general trend continued to be moving downward.