Govt Slams Contractor For Covid Results Delay

Health officials on Tuesday criticised a contractor helping with Covid-19 testing, saying a one-day delay in releasing results for 6,000 people is ‘unsatisfactory’.

Contractors are supposed to give patients their results within two days, but Kingmed Diagnostics – which runs the Henry Leong Yau Ma Tei community centre – delivered results only after three days.

All the affected people tested negative for coronavirus.

However, officials warned that the firm needs to improve its performance or face unspecified ‘further action’.

The Food and Health Bureau said in a statement that the contractor had encountered "technical difficulties" when uploading the results on Thursday last week, and only managed to send the results out on Saturday.

Officials said while there was nothing wrong with the test results, it had inconvenienced those affected.

They also noted that staff at the centre were unable to answer people's queries.