Bengaluru: Probe test data leak, say doctors

BENGALURU: Ten employees of Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research (SJICSR), who had tested positive last week, received messages on their phones two days ago stating they were negative for the infection. Confused, the patients underwent a retest due and were found positive. The tests were done at Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology (KMIO).
“The negative result messages were not sent from the government portal and this has led to suspicion.We have no clue how lab data is being accessed by miscreants. It needs cybercrime police investigation,” said Dr CN Manjunath, director, SJICSR and nodal officer, Covid 19 taskforce for lab testing.

The staff tested positive on June 26 and they received contradictory messages two days later. “Mischief mongers appear to be hacking data. Because of the confusion, I made sure they were all tested again,” said Dr Manjunath.
A technician from Nimhans who tested positive also received a message on his phone saying he is negative. A re-test confirmed an infection. The lab faced a similar situation again on Wednesday, when a cancer patient from Kidwai, who tested positive on June 29, received a message later saying she was negative.
“We upload lab reports on the ICMR portal. We do not send messages,” said Manjunath Siddappa, director, Bangalore Medical System, who runs the lab in KMIO. “If there is a data leak, it is not from our end.”
The lab has conducted 48,000 tests since April 28 and tests 1,200 samples a day. When contacted, Dr C Ramachandra, director, KMIO, said he was unaware of the matter. The government recently issued a notification banning all labs from sharing Covid-19 results with patients. Labs were told that the report must be communicated to the patient only through district administration.