SANTA FE – The New Mexico Department of Health has erroneously sent old coronavirus test results to about 30,000 people, about 1,600 of them were awaiting new test results when they received the notification.
Department spokeswoman Marisa Maez said thousands of people received a repeated notification about an old test because of a technical hiccup caused by a software update, The Santa Fe New Mexican reported.
“The texts were basically repeats of those prior notifications ... even though the recipients had not recently tested,” she said.
The department and software provider sent out follow-up messages apologizing for the error and asking people to disregard the notifications, she said.
The messages were not a result of any “malicious attack” nor were they a result of a hack, she said. But many residents raised concerns anyway.
“It’s kind of terrifying,” Santa Fe resident Jen Stillions said, adding that she was awaiting the results of a recent COVID-19 test and even sent the notification to a volunteer coordinator for a hospice care center where she lends a hand.
Stillions said she worries other people awaiting a new test result might have seen the old result “and thought they were OK and went out and exposed a bunch of people. That’s pretty catastrophic, if you ask me.”
Another resident, Karen Baker, said she and her husband both received the testing messages, though they hadn’t been tested for the virus in a month or more.
“My concern is how much this will erode confidence in the system that the DOH has set up,” she said.
