The regional governor of the Kilkis, north-eastern Greece, said on Tuesday that a spike in the new number of infections reported in the northern Greek region on Monday was the result of a mistake a private diagnostic laboratory in Thessaloniki has made.
In a statement, regional governor Andreas Vergidis said that the lab in question had not reported any of its positive tests to the National Organization for Public Health (EODY) – the Health Ministry agency responsible for collecting and reporting case numbers – since November 24 and released the figures for the period through December 7 as a total.
As result of this “inconceivable mistake,” he said, EODY reported a spike of 102 new infections on Monday, of which 92 were from the specific lab.
The incident, Vergidis added, “shakes public trust at a time that is crucial to the effectiveness of measures aimed at protecting and further bolstering public health against the invisible enemy of Covid-19.”
He went on to call for an investigation that would “restore the credibility of the official agencies and the trust of citizens.”
