More than 1300 British were mistakenly informed that they had coronavirus
British health officials said on the 28th that the laboratory error caused the government to mislead 1,311 people to test positive for the novel coronavirus.
A health ministry spokesman said in a statement to Reuters: “The NHS testing and tracking system has contacted 1,311 people who have been misinformed that they have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. These people were tested from November 19 to November 23. Their test results are invalid because of a batch of the chemicals used to test problems.
The statement said that the lab error was an “isolation incident” and was under investigation; the NHS had notified the 1,311 people to be tested again and that “if there were symptoms, they should continue to self-isolate”.
The NHS is the public health service system of England, regulated by the British Department of Health.
Reuters reported that since the launch of the NHS’s testing and tracking system this year, there have been many mistakes and been criticized. Some government ministers admitted that the system did not work as expected.
The detection and tracking system lost nearly 16,000 positive case records for several days in September, resulting in delays in the tracking of close contacts. After interviewing contact tracing staff, Reuters analyzed that the success rate of the system in tracking contacts from non-family members is relatively low.
