All-clears for those suffering from Covid ‘could have cost lives’

Jodie Greenslade had all the typical Covid symptoms; a fever, loss of taste and smell and an intense pressure on her chest.

But the mother of two from Newport, South Wales, was left baffled when, in the space of a week, five rapid tests returned a positive result but her two PCR tests came back with a negative result.

The teaching assistant said she couldn’t move from her bed two days after the onset of symptoms but had she been feeling better, “I would have been back at work thinking I was Covid free – working in a primary school, not to mention being around my own children and family”.

Mrs Greenslade is potentially one of 43,000 people in the South West who were given the wrong result.

NHS Test and Trace has suspended testing operations provided by Immensa Health Clinic, at its laboratory in Wolverhampton, following an investigation.

A negative PCR means people will not have needed to isolate and could potentially have spread the infection to many other people without realising they were contagious.

The errors relate to test results given to people between Sept 8 and Oct 12, mainly in the South West of England, but with some cases in the South East and Wales. Mrs Greenslade said she felt “fortunate” she had been so unwell, otherwise she would have followed government guidelines and returned to school after her two negative tests.

Ellen Ruddell, from the West Midlands, said her 14-year-old son started to experience shortness of breath, a cough and body aches but his PCR test returned a negative.

“He tested positive last year in October and said he felt far worse [this time],” she said.

Mrs Ruddell, her husband and their two other children soon started experiencing symptoms. Her son had now tested positive on a lateral flow device, but two further PCRS came back negative.

“I booked myself, my husband and my two eldest children in for a PCR test that afternoon, and the following day the results came back negative for all of us,” she said.

After seeing the news about the Wolverhampton lab Mrs Ruddell said she had “lost faith” in the testing system.

Tim Barton, 48, from Swindon, said he and his family received positive lateral flow tests after falling ill with coronavirus symptoms earlier this month but their PCR tests came back negative.

“This will undoubtedly affect people’s confidence in the accuracy of these types of tests … they could have cost lives,” he said.

Helen Diggle, from Tellisford in Somerset, returned five positive lateral flows and three negative PCRS after feeling unwell.

“I was very conscious that by having all these tests I could have been wasting NHS resources to satisfy my own conviction that I had Covid,” she told the BBC.

“I felt like I was being unnecessarily neurotic.”

During a visit to one testing site a staff member told her they had seen lots of similar cases.

Her son eventually tested positive at school using a private PCR test, and it was “blindingly obvious we all had Covid”, she said.

She added: “If children test negative on PCR then schools have to take children back.

“So you probably have many more cases in school than they are expected to deal with.”

Lizzie Roberts