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Most countries report “COVID-19 numbers” on a daily basis. The data must be reliable and real, so that the pandemic can be better controlled. But the truth is that there are many people who question this information.
In the UK, a technical failure has caused 16,000 COVID-19 cases to go unreported. The problem appears to be in Excel and has now been resolved.
The UK recorded 12,594 new infections and 19 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. However, an alleged “technical failure” prevented 15,841 cases of the new coronavirus from being reported between September 25 and October 2 in the statistics updated daily by the Ministry of Health, a problem that led to the total number of daily cases revealed in the last week it was less than the actual number of positive cases.
After all, what is Excel's problem with COVID-19 numbers?
The public health agency Public Health England (PHE) has not explained the source of the error. But several British news sources have pointed the finger at Microsoft Excel. According to The Guardian, PHE is responsible for collecting data from public and private laboratories. A lab sent this information in a CSV file, and since this type of file can only be 1,048,576 lines, the last ones were ignored. This means that after the lab had performed over a million tests, it was only a matter of time before PHE did not read the information in these reports "in full".
PHE was responsible for collecting test results from public and private laboratories, and posting daily updates on the case count and tests performed.
In this case, the Guardian understands, a lab had sent its daily test report to PHE in the form of a CSV file, the simplest possible database format, just a comma-separated list of values. Then that report was uploaded to Microsoft Excel and the new tests at the bottom were added to the main database.
But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When opening a CSV file longer than that, the bottom rows are cut off and no longer displayed. That means, once the lab had run over a million tests, it was only a matter of time before PHE couldn't read their reports.
There is another explanation ...
The BBC has another explanation. The PHE established an automated process to compile this COVID-19 data into Excel models so that it could be uploaded to a central system and made available to the NHS assessment and assessment team, as well as the government itself. The problem is that the PHE developers chose an old file format to do this, known as XLS. As a result, each model could handle only around 65,000 rows of data, instead of the more than a million rows Excel is capable of today. Since each test result creates multiple lines of data, in practice this means that each model is limited to approximately 1400 cases. When that total was reached, the other cases were simply “ignored.
PHE had established an automated process to gather this data into Excel templates and then upload it to a central system and make it available to the NHS test and trace team, as well as other government computer panels.
The problem is that the PHE developers chose an old file format to do this, known as XLS.
As a consequence, each template could only handle around 65,000 rows of data instead of the million rows that Excel is actually capable of.
And since each test result created multiple rows of data, in practice it meant that each template was limited to about 1,400 cases. When that total was reached, other cases were simply dropped.
PHE assured that the "technical problem" has been resolved and that all positives have already been informed of the situation, although this is not the case of other people who have been in contact with those infected.
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