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We still don’t know why 15,841 confirmed cases of coronavirus were effectively lost from the English testing system.
The prime minister called it a “computer problem.” In other places, it has been called a “failure.”
What we do know is that on September 24 something went wrong with the computer system connecting Lighthouse Laboratories to Public Health England (PHE). Typically, Test and Trace passes new cases to PHE, which then adds them to the daily totals. But, as of September 24, some results did not appear.
I have seen a copy of a note sent by PHE to the directors of public health in the Northwest, which contains a table showing how the lost cases accumulated. On the first day, 957 did not show up. On October 2, the day the issue was discovered, 4,786 cases were not added to the system.
That’s almost 5,000 positive cases that were not included in the daily national total and, more importantly, they were not passed on to Test and Trace.
The note contains some important comments on the practical impact of this news. First, make it clear that this issue does not affect anyone’s results. All those who tested positive were informed and asked to isolate themselves “in the normal way.”
The note also states that the data issue did not change any local lockdowns, saying it “had no impact on the decisions” made at the all-important GOLD meeting that rules on local restrictions. She adds: “In any case, it shows that the virus is in an endemic and growing phase.”
Whether that is accurate remains to be seen. What is undeniable: the impact of this problem on Test and Trace. None of these positive cases have been tracked by contacts, so Test and Trace is now dealing with a substantial delay. A contact tracker says they received the news with “dread.”
An impact for Test and Trace is actually an impact for everyone. More than 15,000 people have not been tracked at a time when the virus is spreading rapidly, and the vast majority of them will now be too late to detect them in time. England’s most important defense against the virus was bypassed by an internal error.
We now know that the coronavirus numbers have been drastically underestimated for more than a week. The effect of this problem can last longer.
I was told that a “serious incident” was declared yesterday in Test and Trace. With so much at stake, the word serious is definitely.
