Covid cases in Oxford and Oxfordshire surge after IT error

UPDATE: Covid 'chaos' from spreadsheet error 'put people at infection risk'

The high figure follows an IT error, which meant thousands of positive tests in England were not passed on to contact tracing.

Public Health England (PHE) said the technical issue resulted in 15,841 cases between September 25 and October 2 also being left out of the reported daily coronavirus cases.

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In Oxfordshire there were 218 new cases reported over the weekend and a further 101 in Oxford.

Last weekend, the total of new cases for the county was 48.

Oxfordshire's director of public health Ansaf Azhar had already warned last week, before the error was discovered, a surge in Oxford cases put the city at risk of 'tough' lockdown measures.

On Friday, the city also hit 'red alert' with the rolling weekly rate of infection for the city 60.3 per 100,000 people for the seven days to September 29.

It was based on 92 new positive tests and put Oxford above the rate of 50 needed to trigger a red alert.

Any missed cases in the city were not included in this rate.

Senior officials said the outstanding cases were transferred to NHS Test and Trace “immediately” after the issue was resolved and thanked contact tracers for their “additional efforts” over the weekend to clear the backlog.

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All cases were passed on to tracers by 1am on Saturday, meaning potential delays of more than a week in contacting thousands of people who were exposed to the virus and telling them to self-isolate.

Oxford coronavirus cases by specimen date. Picture: Public Health England

PHE said every single person who was tested initially had received their test result as normal, with all those testing positive told to self-isolate.

The technical issue – caused by data files reporting positive test results exceeding the maximum file size – also means that daily totals reported on the Government’s coronavirus dashboard over the last week have been lower than the true number.

For example, 4,786 cases which were due to be reported on October 2 were not included in the daily total on the dashboard that day, when the figure was given as 6,968.

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Michael Brodie, interim chief executive at PHE, said the “technical issue” was identified overnight on Friday October 2 in the data load process that transfers Covid-19 positive lab results into reporting dashboards.

The problem was caused by an Excel spreadsheet reaching its maximum file size, which stopped new names being added in an automated process, the PA news agency understands.

The files have now been split into smaller multiple files to prevent the issue happening again.

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “This is shambolic and people across the country will be understandably alarmed."