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A SPREADSHEET error that resulted in nearly 16,000 new cases of coronavirus going unreported last week was described as “shambolic” and “scandalous” today.
According to Public Health England (PHE), a master Excel spreadsheet had reached its maximum capacity and, as a result, the recording process stopped automatically adding names of those testing positive to the database.
PHE said that 15,841 cases in total between September 25 and October 2 had not been counted in the daily toll.
It added that the Excel file has now been split into smaller multiple files and that the number of attempts to call contacts of those affected is being increased from 10 to 15 over 96 hours.
The cases were added retrospectively on Sunday, with a delay of around a week in efforts by the NHS test and trace scheme to contact people, potentially spreading the virus, who have been in close proximity to those who had tested positive.
PM Boris Johnson was unable to say today how many contacts of the people who tested positive had been missed.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said that “people across the country will be understandably alarmed” by the “shambolic” error.
Dr Duncan Robertson, lecturer in management sciences and analytics at Loughborough University and fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford, said it was “an absolute scandal.”
Paul Hunter, professor of health protection at the University of East Anglia, said that “there will be occasional glitches” in a huge data system, but that 16,000 cases going missing over a week is “quite alarming.”
He added that there is a time frame of about “a day or so” in which contact tracing needs to happen in order to have any positive effect.
Rowland Kao, professor of veterinary epidemiology and data science at the University of Edinburgh, said the contacts of those affected will “have already contributed extra infections which we shall see over the coming week or so.”
The weekly rate of new Covid-19 cases has soared in dozens of areas of England after factoring in the missed cases.
Manchester now has the highest rate in England, Liverpool has the second and Knowsley in Merseyside has the third.
Analysis based on PHE data also shows sharp rises in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Leeds and Sheffield.
