400 people in NSW told they did not have COVID-19 but had tested positive

400 people in the Australian state of New South Wales were mistakenly told they did not have COVID-19 but had tested positive.

A Sydney lab initially admitted that it had erroneously told 400 people on Christmas Day that they did not have COVID-19 but was notified about the mistake the following day.

In a statement, the SydPath lab apologized and said the mistake had affected 886 people.

The blunder grew when SydPath later revealed that hundreds more had been prematurely told they had tested negative when their results had not yet been determined.

The mistake, which took place over the Christmas period, was due to a data processing error.

New South Wales is seeing rising infection numbers following the arrival of the hyper-infectious Omicron Covid variant.