The United Kingdom’s Public Health England reported on Sunday that nearly 16,000 cases of COVID-19 went unreported after a technical error.
“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,” said PHE interim Chief Executive Michael Brodie.
The numbers were added to Saturday’s and Sunday’s numbers, and PHE said the issue has been resolved.
Despite not being a part of the daily statistics, PHE confirmed that everyone who tested positive was still notified in the standard time frame.
“Every one of these cases received their COVID-19 test result as normal and all those who tested positive were advised to self-isolate,” Test and Trace PHE Joint Medical Adviser Susan Hopkins said.
The technical glitch reportedly involved the use of Excel spreadsheets, which have a data limit of just over 1 million lines. The issue has been resolved by splitting Excel files into batches in order to avoid breaching the data limit, the Guardian reported. PHE has not confirmed whether the issue was caused by the use of Excel spreadsheets.
The main concern, however, was the fact that the data was not relayed at the time to the National Health Service’s Test and Trace program, the service used by the U.K. for contact tracing. PHE said that all of the data had been transferred by Saturday morning, “and a thorough public health risk assessment was undertaken to ensure outstanding cases were prioritised for contact tracing effectively.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that contact tracers were “now working through all the contacts,” according to the BBC.
The missing cases reveal a gradual increase in the number of daily cases over the course of the week. The data previously showed a relatively flat week hovering around 7,000 cases per day, but the revised data showed an increase from nearly 8,000 cases on Sept. 25 to nearly 12,000 cases on Friday, according to PHE.
Following the announcement, “Excel” became the No. 1 trending term Monday on Twitter, with more than 93,900 tweets with the term, outpacing #WorldTeachersDay and #MondayThoughts.
