The UK government's chaotic COVID-19 data collection has led to confusion regarding the real number of infections in the country, although they have served the authorities' purpose of showing rising testing capacity at each daily press conference, the Sky News broadcaster reported, citing sources
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th July, 2020) The UK government's chaotic COVID-19 data collection has led to confusion regarding the real number of infections in the country, although they have served the authorities' purpose of showing rising testing capacity at each daily press conference, the Sky news broadcaster reported, citing sources.
According to insiders, the UK authorities "buffed the system" to assemble its coronavirus testing program, deliberately breaking established practices of collecting data so that no one could say for sure how many people were tested for COVID-19 and how many of them were positive.
"We said: forget the conventions, we're putting [this data] out," a senior government official told the outlet.
Sky News said that officials from Public Health England and the Department of Health and Social Care "hand-cranked" the numbers to get rapid data on the number of tests conducted in the country per day. However, an internal audit later showed that some of those figures did not add up.
The sources said that the statistical issue was faced by UK officials in the early days of the pandemic, noting that one of the ministers had to fill Excel spreadsheets by calling round in an attempt to collect data to use in each daily press conference. The methods of compiling the data were very primitive and often the figures were recorded using pen and paper, as Sky News obtained hand-written tables of testing data for several parts of the country.
Last week, the UK government admitted that there were cases of double-counting in the country's COVID-19 data and revealed that the total number of infections was 30,000 fewer than was stated in the early official statistics. Moreover, the UK said it will no longer publish daily coronavirus testing statistics, saying that many of the issues with data were historic and had already been addressed.
According to the official statistics, the UK has so far recorded over 287,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 44,500 deaths. Officials say that since the beginning of the outbreak, over 11 million tests have been conducted in the UK.
