A private lab commissioned by the UK government to boost its COVID-19 testing effort in 2021 has issued about 39,000 false negative results due to a staff error, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said on Tuesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th November, 2022) A private lab commissioned by the UK government to boost its COVID-19 testing effort in 2021 has issued about 39,000 false negative results due to a staff error, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said on Tuesday.
Staff at Immensa Health Clinic's lab in the city of Wolverhampton set incorrect threshold levels for reporting positive and negative results of PCR samples for COVID-19, the UKHSA said.
"Based on background infection rates in different population groups at the time, UKHSA estimated that this error could have led to around 39,000 results being incorrectly reported as negative when they should have been positive. This represents around 10% of samples tested at the laboratory between 2 September and 12 October 2021 and 0.3% of all samples tested for NHS Test and Trace during this period," the agency said in a statement.
UK broadcaster Sky news cited UKHSA experts as saying that this error could have led to 680 additional hospital admissions and 23 deaths.
UKHSA suspended testing at Immensa's Wolverhampton laboratory on October 12, 2021, following allegations that at least 43,000 people may have gotten false negative PCR test results.
In October 2020, the lab was given a government contract worth 119 million Pounds ($155 million at the time) and later another 50 million pounds to facilitate additional testing capacity. Later, The Sun newspaper published footage showing lab staff fighting, drinking alcohol and playing football in the workplace.
