A malfunction in data transmission in Health Ministry computers that began Thursday afternoon continued through the night and has not been resolved as of Friday morning, causing extensive delays in receiving thousands of test results that had been performed at the Home Front Command’s drive-in complexes and in nursing homes around the country, Reshet Bet radio reported Thursday and followed with a report on Friday morning. According to the Home Front Command’s status assessment, Israel’s Laboratories are in collapse.
Due to the malfunction, people’s tests are not received for four days or more, and as a result, verified patients don’t go into isolation because they don’t know that their test results are positive. Patients who contact the Health Ministry are told that there is a malfunction and that the results would be sent out when it is resolved.
The Nursing Homes Association told Kan 11 News that about 50% of the tests performed in their institutions are delayed for more than 48 hours and in many cases even longer. Over the last four days, the Health Ministry’s morbidity data are not updated at regular intervals.
The most recent update was issued at 7:50 AM Friday, showing 3,958 new verified patients since Thursday, based on 98,409 test results. Currently, there are 506 patients in severe condition, 128 of them on respirators. A total of 3,171 died from the pandemic since its outbreak.
The head of the public health services, Dr. Sharon Elrai-Price, told Reshet Bet radio on Friday morning: “We are working around the clock to resolve the issue, but unfortunately it has not yet been fully resolved.”
“The malfunction resulted from a combination of factors: the addition of three sampling companies and two private laboratories, in order to increase lab capacity, as well as a fault in the interface for transmitting the results.”