Lab test error led to wrong Covid-19 diagnosis: TTSH

Singapore

HUMAN error in its laboratory led to a false diagnosis of a student who was reported as having Covid-19, said Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) on Tuesday.

A Secondary 1 female student from Jurong West Secondary School was reported last Friday to have tested positive for coronavirus. She was swabbed because she had been in contact with a schoolmate who was previously confirmed to be infected.

In a statement, TTSH said: "Our investigations revealed that there was an erroneous reporting of this case by our laboratory.

"This arose from a human error in the laboratory where two patients had their specimens cross-labelled." The hospital said that the student is well and has been discharged.

The other patient, who was in isolation, has since been admitted to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) and remains stable.

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TTSH said that the original test was undertaken by its laboratory. Subsequently, the student was admitted to the National University Hospital and was again tested twice, and found to be negative on both occasions. The TTSH laboratory repeated a polymerase chain reaction test on the original sample and the result was negative.

Both patients have been informed of the mislabelling incident, said the hospital, adding that it has apologised for the anxiety caused. "We are sorry for the mistake and sincerely regret the inconvenience caused to our patients and her school," it said. "We have audited our laboratory testing for Covid-19 for that period and no other mislabelling was discovered. We have also put in place additional checks to prevent such an incident from occurring again."

The Ministry of Education (MOE) had said last Saturday that the 13-year-old girl from Jurong West Secondary had been serving a home quarantine order by MOH since last Monday, as she was a close contact of her schoolmate who was infected earlier. About 70 students and staff who are close contacts of the infected 13-year-old boy from the same school had tested negative for Covid-19.

The school has been cleaned and disinfected several times since the last weekend, said MOE, with more disinfection and cleaning of the premises being done on Saturday.

Jurong West Secondary had placed all Secondary 1 students on home-based learning last Wednesday and Thursday, pending the outcome of MOH's investigations. As an added precaution, the home-based learning period for Secondary 1 students will be extended until this week before the start of the one-week mid-term break.

Meanwhile, a 62-year-old Singaporean man with a history of diabetes and hypertension has died from complications due to Covid-19 on Tuesday, said the Ministry of Health (MOH).

He is the 27th patient to die from the virus here. MOH also confirmed 347 new cases. They included seven in the community comprising one Singaporean, three work pass holders and three work permit holders. There were also two imported cases, both Singaporeans who returned from India and are on stay-home notices; 338 cases were reported residing in dormitories. THE STRAITS TIMES

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