On Sunday (December 26), a prominent hospital in Sydney in Australia tendered an apology for mistakenly sending a text message to 400 Covid-19 patients, informing them that they tested negative for Covid-19. Even though those people had tested positive for the Chinese virus, the hospital had wrongly told them that they have tested negative.
As per reports, the message was sent on the previous night allegedly by ‘human error.’ In a statement, the St. Vincent’s Hospital informed, “SydPath last night incorrectly messaged more than 400 people, advising them they had tested negative to Covid. These people had tested positive to Covid.”
The hospital is urgently contacting those 400 people to inform them that they are infected so that they don’t potentially spread the virus among family and others during the Christmas festivities.
The hospital became aware of the negligence on Sunday (December 26) morning and has set up an emergency response team to investigate the matter. It further added, “As soon as we became aware of the issue this morning, SydPath immediately commenced a process to contact impacted people. We sincerely apologise to all those impacted.”
According to SydPath Medical Director Prof Anthony Dodds, the error occurred as the hospital had to deal with large volumes of tests. He said, “Owing to the very large volume of tests that we’ve been contending with at SydPath, last night, we incorrectly messaged 400 patents who had been swabbed at our cent from December 22nd and December 23rd, advising them they had tested negative to Covid.”
As of December 26, 2021, Australia has reported a total of 3,01,280 Covid-19 cases and 2,190 fatalities.
