UK Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey walks to the Houses of Parliament
London:
A technical failure in England’s COVID-19 test data system has now been corrected and is not expected to be repeated, Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey said on Monday.
Britain reported an increase in the number of daily COVID-19 cases to a record 22,961 on Sunday, after authorities said a technical glitch meant more than 15,000 test results had not been transferred in IT systems on time, including for contact tracers.
“The problem has been found and corrected and I’m sure the changes are being made immediately to make sure this kind of problem doesn’t happen again,” Coffey told Times Radio.
Coffey told Sky News that Public Health England had identified the problem and had been corrected.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock will brief Parliament on the crash later Monday, she said.
News of the glitch was likely to cast further doubt on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s handling of the COVID-19 epidemic: his government’s response was described by political opponents as slow, poorly organized and confusing.
Johnson, who has promised a “top-notch” testing and traceability system, says there have been missteps but the government has faced the biggest health crisis since the 1918 flu epidemic.
The technical issue, identified on Friday and now resolved, resulted in 15,841 cases not being uploaded to the reporting dashboards used by the National Health Service (NHS) contact tracing system. [nL8N2GV0WM]
“We fully understand the concern this may cause and strong new measures have been put in place as a result,” said Michael Brodie, Acting CEO of PHE.
The authority said all those affected received their results in a timely manner and those who tested positive were asked to self-isolate.
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