The Hospital Authority today said it is highly concerned about an incident in which three deep throat saliva specimens were mistakenly placed in a backup collection box and not sent out for testing.

It said Robert Black General Out-patient Clinic collected deep throat saliva specimens of 26 people on December 1 for COVID-19 testing.

The samples were scheduled to be sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital laboratory for testing.

According to the usual practice, the specimens should be placed in a designated collection box to be sent to the laboratory. However, three specimens were mistakenly placed in the backup collection box by clinic staff and were not sent out.

One of the patients involved enquired with the clinic about the test result on December 4.

After investigation, clinic staff found that the three specimens had been placed in the backup collection box.

Since the specimens concerned had not been sent to the laboratory for immediate handling, the clinic contacted all individuals concerned to resubmit their deep throat saliva specimens to ensure the accuracy of the test results. All results were negative for COVID-19.

The authority apologised to the patients concerned.

The clinic will review the workflow for handling specimens and improvement measures will be proposed to prevent similar incidents from happening again.