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Britain has reported an increase in daily Covid-19 cases to a record 22,961 after authorities said a technical problem left more than 15,000 test results not transferred to computer systems in time.
Boris Johnson. Source: Associated Press
News of the failure is likely to cast further doubt on the robustness of the national test-and-trace system that Prime Minister Boris Johnson said would be “global” but has experienced repeated setbacks.
Yesterday’s daily case number represented a dramatic jump from the 12,872 cases reported the previous day.
The numbers were released hours late, right after a Public Health England statement on the technical issue.
“Today’s and yesterday’s headline numbers are largely due to the backlog of cases that flow through the entire reporting process,” PHE said in a statement.
The issue, which was identified on Friday and has now been resolved, left 15,841 cases unloaded on the reporting panels used by the National Health Service’s contact tracing system.
“We fully understand the concern this may cause and more robust measures have been put in place,” said PHE Acting Chief Executive Officer Michael Brodie.
The authority said all those involved had been given their results in a timely manner and those who tested positive had been told to isolate themselves.
As for tracing the contacts of infected people, PHE said the information had been transferred to the relevant systems over the weekend and that contact trackers were urgently working to catch up.
