Security News > 2020 > October > What a Hancock-up: Technical issue around 'case uploads' smacks Britain as second wave spikes

As the UK heads into a troubling second wave of coronavirus cases, those in contact with thousands of people who just tested positive for COVID-19 in England went about their lives for up to a week unaware they had rubbed shoulders with a carrier.

The under-reporting was widely reported to be down to the use of Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program in transferring test results from labs to the health service to total up.

Each test result, according to the BBC, took up several rows, so the real case limit was about 1,400 per sheet, and after that cutoff point, records were simply left off and not counted when imported.

Wags on Twitter noted, among other things, that the testing catastrophe was "The most shambolic thing to happen to a Microsoft program since Kelly Rowland sent Nelly a text on Excel in the Dilemma video and got mad that he didn't reply."

Head of the UK's COVID-19 Test and Trace organisation and former CEO of hacker-magnet ISP TalkTalk, was announced as head of the new National Institute for Health Protection, the agency that replaces Public Health England.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/10/05/test_and_trace/