Australia / 900 COVID-19 positive people wrongly told they have tested negative in Australia

Sydney: A Sydney lab has told hundreds of people they did not have Covid when they in fact had tested positive, amid soaring infections in the area.

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

The SydPath lab apologised in a statement on Tuesday and said the mistake, which affected 886 people in total, had happened as workers faced an "unprecedented" volume of tests.

The lab said it'd reduce the number of swabs it would process to maintain the quality of testing.

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

Officials say an increase in swabbing tests has caused massive backlogs.

Some of those affected have expressed concern that they may have unknowingly infected their loved ones over Christmas.