Public Health England last night admitted nearly 16,000 cases had been missed off its dashboard system in the space of a week – most of them in the past few days.
In a statement the service said:
“A technical issue was identified overnight on Friday 2 October in the data load process that transfers COVID-19 positive lab results into reporting dashboards. After rapid investigation, we have identified that 15,841 cases between 25 September and 2 October were not included in the reported daily COVID-19 cases. The majority of these cases occurred in most recent days.
Every one of these cases received their COVID-19 test result as normal and all those who tested positive who were advised to self-isolate.”
Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth described the revelation as shambolic and people across the country will be understandably alarmed.
“Matt Hancock should come to the House of Commons on Monday to explain what on earth has happened, what impact it has had on our ability to contain this virus and what he plans to do to fix test and trace.”
