Published 14:39 IST, October 6th 2020
UK might have lost nearly 16k COVID-19 test results due to lack of Excel columns: Report
With millions of COVID-19 cases across the globe, the UK might have lost around 16,000 test results because of the million-row on Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
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With millions of COVID-19 infections across the globe, the UK might have lost around 16,000 test results because of the million-row on Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software. As per the Guardian report, it is understood that the data error caused 15,851 positive tests being left from the official medical records which means at least 50,000 potentially infectious individuals might now have been missed by the contact tracers and are not directed to self-isolate.
The Public Health England, which was responsible to collect the test results from public and private labs and then publishing the daily updates on the test count. However, as per reports, with the rapid development of the nation’s testing programme, much work was done manually including individual labs to send PHE the spreadsheets. But Guardian reported on October 6 saying that one lab’s daily test report in the form of CSV file was misplaced.
In the UK the number of cases rose rapidly.
— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) October 5, 2020
But the public – and authorities – are only learning this now because these cases were only published now as a backlog.
The reason was apparently that the database is managed in Excel and the number of columns had reached the maximum. pic.twitter.com/X4a8keSEHK
How did it happen?
According to the media outlet, the CSV file, which can be of any size and is also the simplest possible database format, was loaded into Microsoft Excel and the new tests were added to the main database. But, unlike CSV files, Microsoft Excel can only be 1,048,576 rows long and in older versions, it is only 65,536. When a CSV file which is longer than the allowed columns is opened in Excel, the bottom rows are cut off and are no longer displayed. This further means, ‘once the lab had performed the COVID-19 tests, the reports soon failed to be read by the PHE.
As per media reports, the technical issue has now been fixed but it prompted a record jump of over 22,000 daily cases on October 4 because the total number of positive cases was higher than previously reported, so it had to be updated. As per the British government, the majority of these cases (75% or 11,968) occurred in recent days, between September 30 and October 2.
Image: AP
14:40 IST, October 6th 2020