(Reuters) – More than 1,300 people in Britain have been falsely reported to have been infected with coronavirus following a government error in the government’s NHS testing and trace system, the Department of Health and Social Care told Reuters on Saturday.
“The NHS Test and Trace has contacted 1,311 individuals who were falsely told that Nov. Nov. 19 and 23. The result of COVID-19 test taken between 23 was positive. The issue with the batch of test chemicals was that their test results were invalid, ‘a department spokesman said in an emailed statement.
“Rapid action was taken to notify the victims and they have been asked to take another test, and continue to self-isolate if they have symptoms.”
The statement said the lab error that led to the problem was a “loneliness phenomenon” and was being investigated.
As part of an expanded program of mass testing, the government has announced an additional 7 billion ($ 9.31 billion) for its COVID-19 testing and contact tracing system.
The series of high-profile failures of the NHS test and trace system has been heavily criticized since the beginning of this year, and ministers admitted they did not perform as they had hoped.
In September, about 16,000 positive case records were lost from the system for several days – delaying contact tracing. The government blamed a “legacy” file system that cut the record after nearly 1,000,000 rows of data.
Reuters analysis and interviews with contact tracers have highlighted issues with the system, and the proportion of non-household contacts being successfully detected when needed is low.
There have been approximately 1.6 million cases of coronavirus in the United Kingdom and more than 57,500 people have died, according to Reuters obtained by Reuters.
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Report by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Edited by Mike Harrison
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