UK: 43,000 may have received false negative COVID results

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — British health officials say an estimated 43,000 people may have been wrongly told they don’t have the coronavirus because of problems at a private laboratory. The U.K. Health Security Agency said Friday that a lab in the central England city of Wolverhampton has been suspended from processing swabs. The issue was uncovered after some people who were positive for COVID-19 when they took rapid tests went on to show up as negative on more accurate PCR tests. The health agency said Friday that the people affected would be advised to get another test. Britain conducts about 1 million coronavirus tests a day and reported almost 40,000 new daily infections over the past week.