Test and Trace chaos as Excel spreadsheet blunder leaves government mortified

The fresh crisis engulfing England’s already beleaguered Test and Trace programme – with nearly 16,000 positive Covid cases reported to have been “lost” in the system – has resulted in long delays to contacts being informed of their need to quarantine.

The shambles will increase pressure on a government already facing considerable criticism from its own backbenchers.

Public Health England has blamed a “technical issue” for the blunder, which has meant that tens of thousands of people who came into close contact with an infected case are only now being told to self-isolate – up to 10 days after transmission might have occurred. The government has been unable to provide an exact figure for how many people this might include, however.

The error has caused the number of daily Covid cases appear to double overnight, from 12,872 on Saturday to 22,961 on Sunday. Officials have said that many of these new cases had in fact occurred the previous week, from Sept 24 to Oct 1.

Incredibly, officials on the supposedly hi-tech project had been using an Excel spreadsheet to compile the numbers, it is reported. The spreadsheet ran out of columns, apparently.

Health officials have been scrambling to trace the contacts of positive cases who, if infected, have had plenty of time to pass on the virus themselves. Labour has called the government’s performance “shambolic”.

The updated figures show that the virus is spreading more quickly than previously thought. Yet, although this is concerning, the rise in new cases is nowhere near the exponential growth that Sir Patrick Vallance warned about two weeks ago.

The blame game is now in full swing. The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, will be grilled by MPs in the Commons this afternoon. The Work and Pensions Secretary, Therese Coffey, has attempted to put the blame on PHE and, by implication, Dido Harding, who heads the National Institute of Health Protection, the new body that PHE was brought under earlier this year.

Coffey said: “We can’t change the recent history. PHE will make sure that this sort of error doesn’t happen again but they did pick up this error and I think they’ve acted quickly to rectify it.”

Accounting issues have plagued official government figures since the start of the crisis and today’s revelations show that they have not yet been laid to rest. Accurate accounting is the bedrock of any effective policy and much has been staked on the day-to-day change in case numbers. This latest error has complicated the situation at a critical juncture in the country’s response to the pandemic.