The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
 
     The spokesperson for the Hospital Authority (HA) made the following announcement today (September 1) regarding a wrong SMS message notification incident:
 
     The HA has provided agency service to the Government since December 2020 for sending SMS messages to remind members of the public for accessing their COVID-19 test results through the electronic testing record website.
 
     The HA information technology staff discovered yesterday evening (August 31) that SMS messages were mistakenly sent again to around 240 000 members of the public during system maintenance. The affected people had earlier performed their tests between February 13 and March 29 this year either by collecting deep throat saliva specimen packs at various sites or being tested in the community testing centres.
 
     The SMS messages only contained a specimen pack number and the hyperlink to the website, but not any personal information and test results. As the electronic testing record system only facilitates enquiry on and downloading of test results conducted within 31 days, the affected people are not able to access the results of the tests conducted in the above-mentioned period. 
 
     The HA is very concerned about the incident and has reported it to the Food and Health Bureau. According to preliminary findings, there has not been any laboratory service involved in the incident nor any delay in test result notification for other people.
 
     The HA expresses apologies to the affected people and will send SMS messages informing them to ignore the SMS notifications received yesterday evening. The Authority will conduct a thorough review of the system and workflow, investigate the cause of the incident and rectify the fault.

Ends/Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Issued at HKT 17:40

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