Discrepancy in COVID-19 Test Result SMS Message

The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:

     To tie in with the "Enhanced Laboratory Surveillance Programme" of the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health, the Hospital Authority (HA) contracted a test service vendor to arrange COVID-19 test and to notify negative test result via SMS message. The HA was notified by the vendor yesterday (March 6) that discrepancy in specimen bottle number was found during the test result information handling process, resulting in the receipt of wrong specimen bottle number in the SMS message. Members of the public concerned were therefore unable to log in to the government's Electronic Testing Record System to download the test result.
       
     103 tested participants were involved in the incident. They returned specimen bottles to General Outpatient Clinics on March 2. All of the test results were negative. The vendor confirmed that no personal data nor privacy was involved in the discrepancy, amid no test result was affected.
       
     The HA is concerned about the incident. Upon received notification, the HA has requested the vendor to inform the members of the public affected and to send amendment SMS immediately. The authority has also tasked the vendor to review the system and to fix the error so as to avoid the occurrence of similar incident.
 
     The HA has reported the incident to the Food and Health Bureau and the Department of Health.