Data glitch ‘did affect figures’ for Nottingham

‘THOUSANDS’ OF CASES IN BACKLOG WERE FROM THE EAST MIDLANDS

A DRAMATIC surge in coronavirus figures came as a “shock” to public health officials in Nottingham after thousands of cases were missed off the regional total due to a technical glitch.

Almost 16,000 new cases had to be added to the official national figures, the Government announced on Monday. This was due to a technical problem, Public Health England says, and resulted in almost 16,000 cases being missed off the daily reports between September 25 and October 2.

Public health director for Nottingham City Council, Alison Challenger, told the Post that “thousands” of cases had been missed off the East Midlands total due to the issue.

She said a number of these affected Nottingham, but stressed that those who had tested positive had been traced and told of their results. These cases have since been added to the national and regional totals.

“From what I can understand it was a delay in sending those reports to the national database,” she said.

“It did affect Nottingham and it put our figures up very suddenly and very quickly and that’s because of the backlog in the number of cases that were notified to us.

“It did come as quite a dramatic rise and shock to us that it had gone up as much as it had and inevitably there is quite a lot of work to make sure the people who tested positive do have their contacts traced.

“It was substantial. For the East Midlands as a whole there was quite a number of thousands that were in that backlog, in that delay, and a proportion of them were in Nottingham. It was significant and we need to make sure we take the measures we need to take to protect our communities.

“There were certainly very few cases that were reported and then we seem to get a sudden surge, and some of those were in that backlog.”

An exact number has not been provided either by the Government or the local authorities as of yet.

In the 24 hours to October 4, Nottingham city alone reported 652 new coronavirus cases, the largest official count since records began, and it is thought some of the backlogged cases were included within this count.

Speaking of the data blunder Michael Brodie, the interim chief executive at Public Health England, said: “A technical issue was identified overnight on Friday October 2 in the data load process that transfers Covid-19 positive lab results into reporting dashboards.

“After rapid investigation, we have identified that 15,841 cases between 25 September and 2 October were not included in the reported daily Covid-19 cases. The majority of these cases occurred in most recent days.

“Every one of these cases received their Covid-19 test result as normal and all those who tested positive were advised to self-isolate.

“NHS Test and Trace and PHE have worked to quickly resolve the issue and transferred all outstanding cases immediately into the NHS Test and Trace contact tracing system.

“We fully understand the concern this may cause and further robust measures have been put in place as a result.”