Woman’s results sent to man living in Scotland

A MAN living in Scotland has been issued an apology after a Welsh woman’s Covid-19 test results were sent to him in error.

On Saturday, the Scottish resident said he was sent two text messages – one in English and one in Welsh – from NHS Wales. They included the name of a woman, her date of birth and the result of her coronavirus test which was negative.

“When I received the text, I was a bit shocked and taken aback by it all,” said the man, who lives just outside Glasgow and has not needed to be tested for the virus himself.

“One of my friends went online and found out who the woman was. It looks like she works for the Welsh NHS. We thought about contacting her with the results ourselves, but we decided not to as we feared she might think it was a scam.

“Even though it was a negative result, I couldn’t help but think this poor woman could still be waiting for the results and isolating herself at home, perhaps with her entire family.”

He said a representative from the Welsh NHS had since been in touch with him to apologise for the mistake.

It is understood the Welsh woman has now been given her results.

“They told me they’d had a few errors similar to this one,” he added.

“I understand mistakes like this can happen. All it takes is one wrong digit on a phone number.”

A Public Health Wales spokeswoman said: “Public Health Wales has become aware of a Covid-19 text result being sent incorrectly to an individual, although we are unable to comment as to whether it is the case outlined in this media enquiry.

“We are in the process of investigating how this specific episode occurred.

The spokeswoman added: “Testing centres in Wales are operated locally by the health boards. While test results are communicated via an automated text messaging service, the sampling and testing process in Wales still has steps that require manual data entry at the sampling centre.

“If, for example, the mobile number is entered incorrectly at the sampling site, there is a risk that the result could go to the wrong person. There have been a very small number of instances where this has happened.

“Work is underway to automate as much of the process as possible.”