The government must be held accountable

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Written by: Commentary Editing Room

2021-03-10 17:15

The last update date: 2021-03-10 17:16

The new crown virus testing contractor made another mistake a few days ago, resulting in late issuance of test results, including positive cases. However, the Food and Health Bureau in charge of supervision only suspended the appointment of the contractor to the new testing point and issued a warning letter.

As the gatekeeper of public health, the government absolutely needs to be tough in the face of negligent inspection contractors and regulate them through a punishment mechanism.

The Hospital Authority and the Food and Health Bureau announced two cases of detection errors on Monday (8th) and Tuesday (9th). The HA claimed that a contractor’s laboratory had environmental pollution, and the cleaning procedures delayed the testing of 20,000 samples. , Leading to delays in sending test results, including one or two positive cases.

It is understood that the contractor involved is Jinyu Inspection (Hong Kong).

The Food and Health Bureau pointed out that Jinyu encountered technical problems during the upload of test results, and it was delayed until three days before notifying about 6,000 testers, which exceeded the contract requirements within 48 hours.

The government has established community testing centers in several areas.

(Photo by Lu Yiming)

The government needs a contractor

For these contractors whose testing procedures were revealed to be wrong, the government’s recent response was grudgingly more stringent. From the beginning, only warning letters were issued to the contractors, and then “extremely unsatisfactory” was used later, and even those who re-offenders “further follow up according to the contract. "Action" and other words, and even suspended the appointment of new mobile sampling stations, etc., but the government has yet to take any actual follow-up actions, and it is inevitable that the outside world will question whether the punishment can be effectively implemented.

In fact, as early as November last year, Golden Mile had been revealed to have falsely sent negative results to six people who had tested positive, but the contract was still renewed.

The reason why the government has tolerated a large number of unscrupulous contractors may be because the government needs testing services provided by agencies, especially after expanding the scope of mandatory testing at the end of last year and requiring the delivery of test results as scheduled.

Even if the contractor is at a loss, the government cannot find a replacement in a short time, so it dares not punish the contractor severely or even suspend the contract.

The government claims that the current public and private laboratories can perform up to 100,000 tests per day, while the official announcement in February this year is about 2 million tests performed by government departments, specific groups and community testing centers, which translates into an average of about 70,000 tests per day. .

On the other hand, as of February, the 24 government-approved testing agencies have large and small scales. Jinyu is considered to be the larger one. The agency claims that the daily testing volume can reach 25,000, which accounts for more than 30% of the total in Hong Kong. .

But even so, as long as the testing organization violates the service promise, it must bear the responsibility.

The Food and Health Bureau announced on March 9 that the contractor involved, Golden Mile Inspection (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. encountered technical problems during the period, and therefore failed to upload the results to the information platform in time on March 4. The staff of the testing center were unable to upload the results to the information platform. Answer public enquiries.

(Data Picture / Photo by Yu Junliang)

Quality is more important than weight

As the testing volume increases, the operating pressure of the laboratory will inevitably increase, but it is still its basic responsibility to ensure that the testing process is orderly and accurate.

What's more, many citizens have to rely on negative reports to go to work, and the test results are related to citizens' health and public health. Therefore, the contractor is really obliged to do so in this matter.

If the contractor proves to be unable to properly handle the surge in the number of samples, it will have to discuss with the government to adjust the testing volume and should not forcefully undertake new tasks in order to reluctantly fulfill the contract.

In any case, the contractor’s mistakes have been made this time and cannot be blamed. In particular, the late notification of positive cases has increased the chances of community transmission.

Even if the contractor has its difficulties, the government's punishment can no longer be sloppy. It must be implemented to serve as a warning.

The government can publicly explain the penalties in the contract so that the public can know whether the penalties are deterrent.

Secondly, when negotiating new contracts, the government should add deterrent fines to prevent contractors from perfunctory performance of their duties.

The government may also consider re-establishing official temporary laboratories based on the experience of popularizing community testing last year, so that private contractors can learn that the government is capable of replacing contractors and no longer feel confident.

Past cases of contractors' mistakes in the detection of new coronaviruses

False positive cases

On November 11 and 12 last year, the contractor Jinyu tested positive for five people, but after taking samples at a public hospital, it was found that only one was recruited.

Disturbance case and false negative result

In mid-November, Jinyu disrupted the contact information of nearly 3,000 tested citizens and sent negative results to 6 positive patients.

Missing registration information

On December 6, a citizen of a high-risk group obtained a positive result after sampling at the community center. Afterwards, it was discovered that the contractor's staff had not uploaded their personal data, and the government could not find the whereabouts of the client.

Employees suspected of deliberately sabotaging samples

BGI tested 16 samples initially positive in mid-February this year, but all of them were negative after review by the Department of Health and the Hospital Authority.

The police later arrested an employee of BGI and found that he deliberately shook the sample vessel, damaging the sample and affecting the test result.

Detection is lagging and citizens have no results for a long time

At the end of February, Prenetics failed to complete the test of the samples received by the Hospital Authority out-patient clinic within 48 hours, and some citizens waited for more than a week without any results.

There are also patients who have been diagnosed after waiting for many days to seek medical advice on their own, but their condition has deteriorated to criticality.

Laboratory environmental pollution

At the beginning of March, a contractor’s laboratory was polluted and needed to be cleaned and disinfected, causing delays in analysis of 20,000 samples.

It is reported that the contractor is Golden Mile.

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