The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) made the claim in a report into errors at the Immensa lab in Wolverhampton. It said as many as 39,000 positive results were wrongly reported as negative in September and October 2021. The mistakes led to “increased numbers of [hospital] admissions and deaths”, the report, published on Tuesday, concluded.
Thousands of people, many in the South West, were wrongly told to stop testing after their results were processed by Immensa. The Wolverhampton laboratory was used for additional testing capacity for NHS Test and Trace from early September 2021, but testing was suspended on 12 October following reports of inaccurate results.
UKHSA experts said the mistakes could have led to as many as 55,000 additional infections in areas where the false negatives were reported.
Immensa was paid more than £100m to carry out Covid testing for the NHS during the pandemic and about 400,000 samples had been processed at the lab in Wolverhampton.
Richard Gleave, UKHSA director and lead investigator, said: "We have concluded that staff errors within Immensa’s Wolverhampton laboratory were the immediate cause of the incorrect reporting of Covid-19 PCR test results in September and October 2021.
“It is our view that there was no single action that NHS Test and Trace could have taken differently to prevent this error arising in the private laboratory.”
23 dead, 55,000 infections and £100,000,000 paid to the company that caused them … another COVID statistic.
