'I thought it was a hoax' - Caller told she had Covid despite not being tested
5 October 2020, 18:18 | Updated: 5 October 2020, 18:37
'I thought it was a hoax' - Caller told she tested positive for Covid despite not having a test
This is the moment a caller told LBC that she was notified by Public Health England about having coronavirus despite not ever being tested.
More than 10 million people have downloaded the NHS Covid-19 app since it was made available for download in England and Wales last Thursday, despite problems which have besieged it since launch.
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden even admitted to LBC a couple of weeks back that there were “teething problems”.
Louise from Finchley told LBC's Shelagh Fogarty: "Quite early on in July, I kept receiving these text messages from Public Health England saying that I'd had a positive test for coronavirus and that I had to phone them up because they wanted to know who I had been in contact with.
"So, at that point, I didn't know anybody who actually had a positive test. I had not been test at all for the virus.
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"I actually thought this was a hoax."
The caller added: "It carried on for another couple of days. I got another message and then I was eventually called up by somebody and obviously still I thought this is a hoax. Then she explained to me that they were trying to get a hold of me because I'd had a positive test for the virus..."
Louise explained on the phone that she thought Public Health England had obviously mixed her up with someone else, but she was still told that she had been the subject of a positive test.
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"I suggested that they need to look at their database more carefully," Louise said.
She also told Shelagh: "I think maybe somebody had a similar phone number to me or something.
"At the time I just thought this is very worrying because this is early-July [and] rates are very low. I thought [about] what would happen later on when rates get higher..."
