Sixteen thousand UK corona infections were not counted by Excel limit

In the United Kingdom, 15,841 coronavirus infections went unnoticed in the official figures for a week, because a limit was reached in Excel. After the discovery, the figures have been added. According to the corona figures published daily by Public Health England, the number of infections rose enormously over the past weekend. Some 13,000 and 23,000 new positive cases were reported Saturday and Sunday. In the week before that, there were about 7,000 a day. Last weekend’s high numbers turn out to be a correction, the BBC writes. PHE found that there were 15,841 positive cases identified between September 25 and October 2 were not included in the figures. PHE tells the BBC that the figures were dropped because a file had exceeded the maximum file size. According to the Daily Mail, the flaw was in an Excel spreadsheet, which was so large that new data could not be added. The problem would have been solved by working with multiple Excel files. Whether the limit was related to the file size or the number of rows or columns is unclear. Excel supports up to 1,048,576 rows with 16,384 columns. The maximum file size for 32-bit systems is 2GB, but with 64-bit systems there is no hard limit, but people who tested positive and who were not included in the statistics in time were immediately informed about their infection. However, no contact investigation took place due to the error. As a result, the error can have greater consequences than just the noticeable rise in the graph. Also, due to the loss of the figures, the number of infections in the past week was significantly higher than what was reported by PHE in the British corona dashboard. British corona figures