Public Health Wales seeks to reassure after 11,000 covid tests added to figures
An extra 11,000 positive coronavirus tests missing from official figures in Wales demonstrate "how serious the position" in the country is, First Minister Mark Drakeford has said.
Maintenance work on Public Health Wales systems at the end of last week meant the numbers were not included on top of 11,911 positive cases reported by the agency between December 9 and 15.
52 new Covid deaths and 11,468 cases were reported in Wales on Thursday by Public Health Wales.
On Thursday Mr Drakeford denied the data had been "missing" from the country's figures in recent days and was known by the Welsh Government.
He told BBC Breakfast: "This was planned upgrading of the computer system, none of the data is missing, everybody who had a positive test in Wales was told that last week, everything was uploaded on to our Track, Trace and Protect system.
"But the figures do demonstrate just how serious the position here in Wales has become and underlines why we made the decisions yesterday both in the lead-up to Christmas, during Christmas, and once Christmas is over.
"The Government was aware that there were tests that are being carried out which were not being loaded on to the system because that is what we already announced."
A statement from Public Health Wales on Thursday morning sought to reassure anyone who had tested positive for covid-19, saying anyone who did test positive would be contacted.
It said: "As Public Health Wales has indicated previously, the data delay over the weekend was part of essential maintenance for the wider Welsh NHS led by the NHS Wales Informatics Service.
"Public Health Wales announced on Friday that the maintenance would have an impact on its reporting.
“It has not affected individuals receiving their results and the contract tracing process being commenced.
"Members of the public can be reassured that anyone who tests positive will be contacted by their local authority’s Test, Trace, Protect team in the usual way.
"There have been no errors in the Public Health Wales reporting.”
PHW said its dashboard was being updated with the figures following the work on its NHS Welsh Laboratory Information Management System (WLIMS).
It said: "This means that we expect a backlog of results to come through over the coming days, and there will be a period of data reconciliation and validation that will affect our daily reporting figures for several days.
"(Thursday's) figures and those over the following days will be higher as a result of the backlog coming through."
Analysis by James Crichton-Smith
This is not the first time that data around covid has made the headlines.In the early days of the pandemic, there were concerns around under-reporting of cases.
Later, PHW accidentally made public the details of all the covid cases it had at the time, now a delay in information from lighthouse labs is making for some awkward questions for Public Health Wales and Welsh Govt.At a time when Wales is heading for another lockdown and timely, reliable data is key to decision making and informing the public, the timing of this delay couldn’t be much worse for Welsh Government.
A Welsh government statement said: "This issue was caused by a planned upgrade which we were aware of and that was publicised in advance.
"This is not an issue of lost data.
"Public Health Wales were clear that data would not be uploaded to the system while the upgrade was carried out and tested.
"Everyone who received a test during the upgrade period received their results and all results were logged on our systems.”
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