Immensa: Why were Covid test errors at Wolverhampton lab not stopped sooner?

For almost a month last year a coronavirus testing lab in Wolverhampton sent out thousands of incorrect results telling people they were clear when in fact they were infected.

Immensa Labs is estimated to have sent out about 43,000 "false negative" results to people right across the south west of England.

The BBC has been trying to find out what went wrong at Immensa and what the impact has been of this mistake.

So many incorrect test results meant more people ended up infected, more people were hospitalised and, sadly, more people will have died.

People such as Pam Bembenek. She caught coronavirus on 18 October 2021, which was after testing was officially halted at Immensa.

She died five days later on 23 October 2021. Her granddaughter Amber Marshall said Mrs Bembenek had caught Covid from a worker at her care home - a worker who'd been given the wrong PCR test result.

Mrs Marshall said she had been told by a manager at the home near Dursley, Gloucestershire, the test result had said the worker was free from coronavirus when actually they were infected. The worker then brought the virus into a care home full of vulnerable older people. It was likely one of thousands of wrong results sent out by Immensa.

Until that point the care home had managed to get through the whole pandemic successfully keeping coronavirus out.

According to Mrs Marshall, a number of other residents also tested positive alongside her grandmother, but she doesn't know if the others who were infected also died.

The BBC has been told the incorrect results were sent out between 8 September and 12 October 2021. That's more than 30 days before the mistake was noticed and Immensa Labs was told to stop.

Our investigation has revealed someone tried to alert the government to the problems long before any official action was taken.

James Beecher is a resident of Stroud, in Gloucestershire, who correctly identified there was something going wrong at a testing laboratory.

Had action been taken, authorities could have prevented problems 10 days after issues were identified on 18 September.

That would have stopped thousands of incorrect results being sent out. It could have saved Mrs Bembenek's life.

Mr Beecher is one of the admins on the Stroud Coronavirus Community Response group on Facebook.

He's been updating more than 5,000 group members with the latest on the virus since the pandemic started.

On 18 September he posted about coronavirus case numbers in Stroud and Gloucestershire. He noticed a sharp drop in daily cases from more than 300 to just 100.

Drops like this can happen in response to a big change like a lockdown. But at this time England was not in lockdown. Mr Beecher says the number of cases "just fell off a cliff".

In an email to his Facebook group, Mr Beecher wrote: "The decline is so deep that a problem at a testing lab may be involved."

His suspicions were confirmed.

Having noticed there appeared to be a problem, he tried to alert people to what was going on.

The local community, the people on his Facebook group and beyond, were very interested in what he was saying.

Mr Beecher said lots of people had been affected by incorrect PCR tests and they were grateful to be reassured their lateral flow test was almost certainly right.

He said he hoped some had isolated and stopped spreading the virus further.

But Mr Beecher found the government, in the form of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), to be "profoundly unhelpful" and it "essentially ignored me for a fortnight".

Mr Beecher was not just a member of the public - he had been identified by the department as a Covid community leader.

The DHSC referred him to its media team who "promised to call but never did".

As we now know, it turned out there was a problem at Immensa in Wolverhampton.

However, it would be another 24 days before testing was officially suspended at the lab.

Immensa Health Clinic Limited was set up as a company just over three months after the first official case of coronavirus in the UK.

Shortly afterwards it received a £119m contract from the government to carry out coronavirus PCR tests.

Official records state Immensa has one officer and owner - Andrea Riposati.

After eight months of operation, Immensa featured in an undercover exclusive in the Sun on Sunday.

On 31 January 2021, staff at Immensa had been secretly filmed sleeping, playing football and fighting in the lab where testing was carried out.

According to the Sun on Sunday, a source inside the company said: "The company has been handed a multimillion-pound contract for the staff to just mess around and potentially ruin thousands of tests."

The newspaper asked Immensa to comment for the story but the Sun on Sunday reported the company said nothing.

The government told the Sun on Sunday it was investigating the story, but the results of that investigation were never made public and despite these apparently serious problems, Immensa was allowed to carry on with vital testing work.

Seven months later the same company would issue thousands of incorrect "false negative" test results.

Like any company, Immensa Labs must file its accounts and these should be available for people to look at.

But as soon as the company was formed it shortened its financial year end to June 2020 and immediately filed the accounts, indicating the company had not traded and only had £100 in the bank.

While technically true, the company was in the process of bidding for a £119m government contract.

Companies do change the dates they use for the financial year. A nursery, for example, might synchronise its financial year with term time, but it is unusual to do this.

Then, earlier this year Immensa extended its financial year to December 2021, which meant the next set of accounts do not have to be filed until September 2022 at the latest.

This provides the maximum possible time to run its £119m contract, before it legally has to submit its financial statements.

One accountant told the BBC this sort of behaviour is "rare" in a company.

It's unclear how many incorrect results were sent out by Immensa Labs. The figure of 43,000 given by the government is an estimate based on the number of tests carried out and levels of coronavirus at the time.

Finding an exact number for incorrect tests and the number of people who died as a consequence may be hard.

There are hundreds of thousands of results to check.

But one expert the BBC has spoken to believes it would take about five minutes to find out the answer.

Thiemo Fetzer is a professor of economics at the University of Warwick. He's been trying to use freedom of information requests to get hold of the testing data.

His requests are very specific and he knows exactly which element of the spreadsheets covering testing is required to reveal the answer. He believes it would take minutes to do the checks and see who tested negative, according to the lab, after a positive lateral flow at home.

If the data shows errors were happening all of the time, then it could have been a problem with faulty equipment. However, if the errors occur in a pattern then it's possibly a staff issue depending on when certain people were on shift.

Prof Fetzer sent two freedom of information requests to the part of the government that deals with infectious disease, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). He is trying to get geographic breakdowns of case numbers and also breakdowns of negative PCR tests following positive lateral flows.

Both requests have been turned down. One on the grounds of cost and the other on the grounds the UKHSA may launch legal action against Immensa. Although it adds this doesn't necessarily mean it would definitely take the company to court.

Prof Fetzer is appealing against both decisions via the Information Commissioner.

The BBC has managed to get a brief response from the UKHSA.

Dr Will Welfare, incident director for Covid-19 at the UKHSA, said: "A full investigation remains ongoing and we will provide an update in due course; we cannot comment on any information that could form part of these investigations before they are complete.

"We suspended testing at the Immensa Wolverhampton laboratory following an ongoing investigation into positive LFD results subsequently testing negative on PCR. Those affected were contacted as soon as possible."

Immensa has legally made sure it has the longest time available before it has to reveal the financial details of the company and its £119m government contract.

The government has turned down several freedom of information requests from the BBC, asking for the full impact assessment detailing the excess death estimated and also asking for release of the report into what actually went wrong.

Prof Fetzer says when private companies are involved in public health, they should be transparent and honest about how they work. This is especially important, he says, when something goes wrong.

The DHSC told the BBC a minister would not be available to comment.

Immensa and its parent company Dante Labs have refused all BBC requests to be interviewed.

It is possible some deaths could have been avoided if the government had taken action earlier after concerns were raised about Immensa Labs.

At the heart of the story is a young company that has released as little information about itself as possible and where the quality of its work was called into question not once, but twice.

As free coronavirus testing for most comes to an end, the implications of testing failures during the height of the pandemic may have cost people's lives.

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