England’s government agency charged with responding to public health emergencies said mistakes at a testing laboratory could have resulted in tens of thousands of positive COVID-19 cases being reported as negative, which might have caused the deaths of 20 people.
Britain has one of the highest coronavirus death tolls in the world, reporting more than 177 000 deaths since the pandemic started in 2020, reports TimesLIVE.
An investigation by the UK’s Health Security Agency found the Immensa laboratory in central England misreported some 39 000 tests as negative when they should have been positive between 2 September and 12 October last year.
Richard Gleave, UKHSA director and lead investigator, said: “It is our view there was no single action that NHS Test and Trace could have taken differently to prevent this error arising in the private laboratory. However, our report sets out clear recommendations to both reduce the risk of incidents like this happening again.”
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