A big mistake was made in a Belgian laboratory last week. Several people who came to be tested for the coronavirus in this establishment in Louvain-La-Neuve, on December 27, received poor results, reports Sudinfo relayed by The evening.
People who tested positive were declared negative and conversely, those who tested negative received a positive result. An error fraught with consequences, especially during this holiday season. This would concern about thirty patients, “no more than 46 in any case”. The laboratory apologized to them and made a point of making a gesture: “We are also ready to compensate these people if, for example, a trip had to be canceled for a false positive test. “
Only one error out of 300,000 tests this year
According to the laboratory, “this is a human error in the encoding”. Surprised to have tested negative, two patients alerted the establishment. “Our quality unit immediately spotted the error. Rather than reverting the results, we reanalyzed the samples to be sure, and we alerted the patients for which the results changed, ”explained the laboratory.
The latter affirms that the error would have been, whatever happens, quickly identified “thanks to a system of double encoding”. “This is the first time that such an error has occurred, out of a total of 300,000 tests carried out in 2021”, assures the laboratory.