A REPORT investigating a covid testing facility which returned false negative results must be released, according to a senior Labour figure.

Last year, an estimated 43,000 PCR tests sent to the Immensa Health Clinic were falsely returned as negative – despite many of them actually positive results.

As a result, some members of the public were falsely told that they did not have covid – and were able to live their daily lives as usual, potentially passing the deadly virus on to others.

The false tests all came from a private facility in Wolverhampton which had secured a £119 million contract from the UK Government to carry out PCR testing.

And, in the last week of September 2021, with 190,000 PCR tests administered in Wales, leaving local facilities stretched, many tests here were sent to Immensa.

It has since been confirmed that tests carried out in Newport are among the 43,000 which returned false negatives.

The Argus was able to verify that this includes people who obtained a PCR test at the walk-in testing centre at Newport’s Civic Centre.

Weeks later, those who were given the incorrect information received text messages confirming the false results.

By that time, the damage could have been done, with health experts claiming that the error could have caused as many as 1,000 deaths.

What has the investigation shown?

Following the incident, a report into what went wrong at the Immensa Health Clinic was carried out.

But, while this was completed shortly before Christmas in 2021, it has yet to be published or released.

Now, Labour's shadow minister for public health in England has called for that report to be released.

South Wales Argus: Shadow minister for public health Andrew Gwynne MPShadow minister for public health Andrew Gwynne MP

Andrew Gwynne said: “You would hope that all these laboratories were routinely tested, and that due diligence was done on the results, so that people did have confidence the results were perfect and not sending people into the community and spreading the coronavirus to all and sundry.

"The suspicion in me is that there is possibly information that they don't want to be routinely in the public domain, but transparency is required here.

"We need to know what went wrong.”

In response to these calls, the UK Health Security Agency released a short statement, saying: "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."