Corrupted coronavirus database: Info on children, teachers missing

A malfunction in the database used to store information about tested coronavirus patients resulted in some data from the source and contact tracing going missing, health institute RIVM and health service GGD confirmed to AD. For a time, information on how many children, caregivers and teachers were infected could not be found. The problem has since been resolved.

The issue was with the CoronIT database, the system set up specifically for the coronavirus, where characteristics of patients who tested positive are stored. "The database has become so large that it causes problems. It concerns the test results of 370,000 people, tested since June 1. That number is still increasing, the database is gigantic," Susan van den Hof, head of the Center of Epidemiology and Surveillance of Infectious Diseases, said to the newspaper.

Van den Hof told AD that they could not find any data on how many people who work in healthcare tested positive for the virus, or in schools or in daycare centers. "We know how many patients there are, but this week we don't know hw many children, healthcare workers, care givers and childcare workers were tested and what percentage tested positive." This involved data of 73 thousand people tested between Monday and Sunday last week.

GGD GHOR spokesperson Sonja Kloppenburg confirmed that there were problems with the database, but stressed that the data was only hard to access for a time, not lost completely. "The data was still in the database, you could still access it manually. But you couldn't get all the information about a certain target group." The problem was resolved by around 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, but that was too late for the RIVM's weekly coronavirus support.

Kloppenburg stressed that the problems "did not affect the acute fight against the virus". "We are not afraid that we will miss a cluster because of this."