UK COVID cases jump to 22,961 after glitch causes backlog

 

FILE PHOTO: Social distancing signs are seen marked on the street outside The Royal Opera House, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in London, Britain July 6, 2020. REUTERS/John Sibley

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain reported a jump in daily COVID-19 cases to a record 22,961 on Sunday, after authorities said a technical issue had meant that over 15,000 test results had not been transferred into computer systems on time, including for contact tracers.

 

News of the glitch was likely to cast further doubt over the robustness of the national test-and-trace system, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson said would be "world-beating" but which has experienced a series of delays and setbacks.

 

Sunday's daily cases figure represented a dramatic jump from the 12,872 cases reported on Saturday. The Sunday numbers were published hours behind schedule, just after a statement from Public Health England (PHE) about the technical problem.

 

"Today and yesterday’s headline numbers are large due to the backlog of cases flowing through the total reporting process," PHE said in a statement.

 

The technical problem, which was identified on Friday and has now been resolved, led to 15,841 cases not being uploaded into reporting dashboards used by the National Health Service (NHS) contact-tracing system.

 

"We fully understand the concern this may cause and further robust measures have been put in place as a result," said PHE's interim chief executive, Michael Brodie.

 

The authority said that all the people concerned had been given their results in a timely fashion, and that those with positive results had been told to self-isolate.

 

In terms of tracing the contacts of the infected people, PHE said the information had been transferred to the relevant systems over the weekend and contact tracers were now working urgently to catch up.

 

"NHS Test and Trace have made sure that there are more than enough contact tracers working, and are working with local Health Protection Teams to ensure they also have sufficient resources to be urgently able to contact all cases. We are also increasing the number of call attempts from 10 to 15 over 96 hours," PHE said.

 

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Peter Cooney)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-10-05

 

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This is fairly common procedure to correct the infection tally. 

 

China had done the same in June 2020.  Now it is UK turn. 

Of Course, there is DOUBLE Standard view by Western Media. 

33 minutes ago, webfact said:

News of the glitch was likely to cast further doubt over the robustness of the national test-and-trace system, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson said would be "world-beating" but which has experienced a series of delays and setbacks

and inept political leadership

Edited October 5, 20205 yr by Bluespunk
key word added

1 hour ago, sscc said:

This is fairly common procedure to correct the infection tally. 

 

China had done the same in June 2020.  Now it is UK turn. 

Of Course, there is DOUBLE Standard view by Western Media. 

I agree that more than a few countries have had similar 'glitches' where numbers were entered after-the-fact leading to spikes and a degree of panic fueled by some irresponsible actors in MSM. However, as the Reuter's article cited in the OP points out, no other country has ever claimed that their bespoke hide and seek track and trace apps are infallible or "world beating". Only the foot-shooter's currently playing hop-scotch in Westminster have claimed that nonsense.

1 hour ago, NanLaew said:

I agree that more than a few countries have had similar 'glitches' where numbers were entered after-the-fact leading to spikes and a degree of panic fueled by some irresponsible actors in MSM. However, as the Reuter's article cited in the OP points out, no other country has ever claimed that their bespoke hide and seek track and trace apps are infallible or "world beating". Only the foot-shooter's currently playing hop-scotch in Westminster have claimed that nonsense.

The UK PM just imitates Trump big words but no actions. They even look similar ????

England is a Covid disaster thanks to an utterly inept leadership and incompetent reliance on outside contractors that in some cases are hired despite having no relevant track record. At least Scotland has a reasonable record of managing matters. And then you get countries that patently lie, like Turkey which only records symptomatic cases despite asymptomatic people being greater in number. So all the Poms who raced off to holiday in that country have been exposed to plenty of risk & have taken the virus back home to England where no one is tested on entering the country. Utter madness!

Coronavirus vaccine head: Less than half of the UK population could get vaccinated

Sky News•5 October 2020

 

Kate Bingham said officials hope to give the vaccine to around 30 million adults - less than half of the country's population of 67 million.

The head of the immunisation programme told the Financial Times: "People keep talking about 'time to vaccinate the whole population' but that is misguided.

"There is going to be no vaccination of people under 18.

"It's an adult-only vaccine for people over 50 focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable."

In September, the government's Joint Committee On Vaccination And Immunisation published a draft list showing who is likely to be at the front of the queue for a jab if or when a coronavirus vaccine is approved in the UK.

The committee said a "simple age-based programme" was recommended as a means of deciding who gets priority, adding that this approach "will likely result in faster delivery and better uptake in those at the highest risk".

The draft list named older adults in care homes and care home workers as the first group, followed by those aged over 80, over 75, over 70 and over 65.

3 hours ago, robblok said:

The UK PM just imitates Trump big words but no actions. They even look similar ????

what can the pm do if large numbers in the north and wales wont isolate ,its not country wide as most areas dont have any covid cases .zero cases in 70% of the uk

Another fine piece of work from Baroness Dido Harding's empire. This is the woman who was presiding over TalkTalk when they had their massive data breach and, at the time, she showed a remarkable ignorance about almost any subject (except perhaps her great friendships with ex-PM David Cameron and current PM Johnson) and eventually left with a £2.8m 'reward', a small proportion of which she donated to charity after the uproar. Now she has been selected as the person most suitable to run Test and Track by the government and Public Health England has been dismantled and the responsibility for its work handed to the useless Harding (now Baroness, presumably for services to data protection and understanding of security) and her lovely well paid operation. Previously her IT brilliance enabled her to be put in charge of the initial app - the 'world beating' app that would be ready by the end of May and which failed dismally (costing only a few dozen millions) - obviously a good reason to give her even more responsibility and a well stocked department to replace a functioning section which provided figures not to the PMs liking. She also was on the board of Cheltenham Races which allowed a 150,000 crowd to attend the festival in March, four days before the belated shutdown.

Oh, and she is married to a tory who is on the advisory board of right wing think tank 1828 which promoted the idea of replacing NHS England and which wants the NHS to go to a insurance based rip-off. Amusingly, he is also widely described as Boris Johnson's 'Anti-corruption champion'.

I guess it proves that it doesn't matter what you know but who you know.

Edited October 5, 20205 yr by mrfill

hence the lack of access to the STV..

3 hours ago, 3NUMBAS said:

what can the pm do if large numbers in the north and wales wont isolate ,its not country wide as most areas dont have any covid cases .zero cases in 70% of the uk

I agree that individuals have to take personal responsibility for themselves (and their communities), and that the guidelines should be followed.

 

However, Johnson's leadership and actions have been pitiful. Cast your mind back to March. Firstly, the strategy was herd immunity when the rest of Europe had effectively ruled this out. However, we were following THE science, the inference being that the rest of Europe had it wrong. Add in his refusal to take the virus seriously e.g. missing COBRA meetings, insisting he would shake hands with everyone, missed testing targets, empty rhetoric, etc. then I'd suggest that there was plenty Johnson could have done differently and better.

10 hours ago, webfact said:

Today and yesterday’s headline numbers are large due to the backlog of cases flowing through the total reporting process," PHE said in a statement.

Bit odd that. Uncle Boris said it was a computer issue, on the Andrew Marr show.

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 20205 yr by faraday

22 hours ago, sscc said:

This is fairly common procedure to correct the infection tally. 

 

China had done the same in June 2020.  Now it is UK turn. 

Of Course, there is DOUBLE Standard view by Western Media. 

Eh? It was a schoolboy error done on a spreadsheet using an old version of Excel? You couldn't make it up?!

 

Even my kid knows there are better ways to handle large data than freaking Excel.

 

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2237475-covid-19-news-almost-16000-uk-cases-missed-due-to-excel-error/

Edited October 6, 20205 yr by WorriedNoodle