43K in UK may have been wrongly told they’re Covid -ve
LONDON/SYDNEY: British health officials said on Friday that an estimated 43,000 people may have been wrongly told they don’t have the coronavirus disease because of problems at a private laboratory.
The UK health security agency said a lab in Wolverhampton, central England, has been suspended from processing test swabs after reports of false negatives. The faulty results were among tests processed at the Immensa Health Clinic Lab between early September and this week.
The issue was uncovered after some people who were positive for Covid-19 when they took rapid tests went on to show up as negative on more accurate PCR tests.
“Around 400,000 samples have been processed through the lab, the vast majority of which will have been negative results, but an estimated 43,000 people may have been given incorrect negative PCR test results,” mostly in southwest England, the health agency said.
The agency called the problem “an isolated incident attributed to one laboratory” and said the people affected would be contacted and advised to get another test.
One local authority in
England, West Berkshire Council, has told people who were tested at the government-run Newbury Showground site between October 3 and 12 and were told they were negative to get tested again.
Sydney set to finally lift quarantine requirements Sydney will scrap all quarantine requirements for travellers from next month, officials said on Friday, an abrupt step towards reopening Australia’s long-shuttered borders. In a surprise announcement, premier Dominic Perrottet of New South Wales said that from November 1 vaccinated travellers would be allowed to enter the state without quarantine of any kind.
“For double vaccinated people around the world, Sydney, New South Wales, is open for business,” Perrottet said. “Hotel quarantine will be a thing of the past. This is a significant day for our state.”
Russia yet again breaks record for deaths, cases Russia’s daily tolls of coronavirus infections and deaths surged to another record on Friday, a quickly mounting figure that has put a severe strain on the country’s healthcare system. The government’s coronavirus task force reported 32,196 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 999 deaths in the past 24 hours.