Dr Emrys said this activity would breach standard laboratory practices, ESR's safety procedures and its instructions to staff. The plating of solid samples is not considered to pose such a risk.

In a statement, ESR said the two samples were not distinguishable by laboratory typing. However, three investigations had concluded that the procedures in the lab reflected safe-practice requirements.

This real-time lab testing data is received and stored in ESR’s Eclair CDR and can be easily extracted to provide a full and complete national view of COVID-19 testing.