LONDON • More than 1,300 people in Britain were inaccurately informed they were infected with the coronavirus after a laboratory error at the government's National Health Service Test and Trace system, the Department of Health and Social Care told Reuters yesterday.
"NHS Test and Trace has contacted 1,311 individuals who were incorrectly told that the result of Covid-19 tests, taken between Nov 19 and Nov 23, were positive. An issue with a batch of testing chemicals meant their test results were void," a department spokesman said in an e-mailed statement.
"Swift action was taken to notify those affected and they have been asked to take another test, and to continue to self-isolate if they have symptoms."
The laboratory error that led to the problem was an "isolated incident" and was being investigated.
The government has announced an extra £7 billion (S$12.5 billion) for its Covid-19 testing and contact tracing system as part of an expanded mass testing.
The Test and Trace system has been heavily criticised after a series of high-profile failures since its launch earlier this year, and ministers concede it has not performed as well as they had hoped.
In September, nearly 16,000 positive case records were lost from the system for several days - causing a delay in contact tracing. The government blamed a "legacy" file system that cut off records after about 65,000 rows of data.
The UK has had about 1.6 million coronavirus cases and over 57,500 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.
More than 1.4 million people have died since the coronavirus emerged in China late last year, and three drug developers - Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca/Oxford University - are seeking approval for their vaccines to be used as early as next month.
On Friday, the British government said it has asked its independent medicines regulator to assess AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine as part of the formal approval process for the drug to be rolled out by the end of the year.
AstraZeneca has completed phase 3 clinical trials of its vaccine, the last stage before regulatory approval. But under British rules, the government must also ask the independent Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to greenlight the drug.
Britain has secured access to 100 million doses of the vaccine produced by the British drug manufacturer in partnership with the University of Oxford.
The health department has said it expects four million doses of the shot to be ready for Britain by the end of the year and 40 million by the end of next March.
AstraZeneca last Thursday said further research was needed on the vaccine, but the additional testing was unlikely to affect the approval process.
Countries across Europe have been battling a second wave of infections and nations are wrestling with how to keep their citizens safe while allowing them a little relief over the holidays.
Ahead of Christmas, places such as Belgium, Ireland and Italy will ease Covid-19 restrictions to varying degrees, allowing some shops to reopen and permitting forms of travel or gatherings.
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
