Princess Margaret Hospital announces incident involving handling of specimens
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The spokesperson for Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) made the following announcement today (October 12) regarding an incident involving the handling of specimens:
PMH has set up a specimen collection point at the Specialist Out-patient Clinic for PMH patients to submit deep throat saliva specimens for COVID-19 testing. Ten deep throat saliva specimens submitted last Saturday (October 10), which were scheduled to be sent to the PMH laboratory for COVID-19 testing on the same day, were found at the collection point this morning. As the specimens concerned had not been sent to the laboratory for handling immediately, the hospital has contacted all individuals concerned to re-submit deep throat saliva or nasopharyngeal swab specimens to ensure the accuracy of the test results.
The hospital is highly concerned about the incident and apologises to the patients concerned for the inconvenience caused. The hospital has reported the case to the Hospital Authority Head Office via the Advance Incident Reporting System. Meanwhile, the hospital will enhance staff training and review the workflow for handling specimens, and improvement measures will be proposed to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
Ends/Monday, October 12, 2020
Issued at HKT 19:04
Issued at HKT 19:04
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