Covid testing and tech issues
Last weekend I was on day twelve of quarantine after returning to the UK, and eager to be able leave the house again, when I developed some suspicious symptoms including a definitive viral infection.
The symptoms started on Saturday but I wasn’t able to book a test until Tuesday. I know Serco (who are the people behind the misnamed NHS Test and Trace, it’s not run by the NHS) are having all sorts of issues with testing capacity but the problems started way earlier, on the government website.
Quite often the pathway through the steps would just fail and you’d be sent back to the frontpage to fill in all your details again, and submit buttons felt like they were timing out and you weren’t sure whether they were registered,
I tried three different browsers, disabled ad blockers, used incognito sessions all to no avail. It seemed like a server side issue.
Needless to say, I got an appointment which nobody could find on the system once I got to the testing site. Fortunately I took a screenshot to prove I got that far in the web process. I did manage to get a test done (negative) but I can imagine that a lot of people who are not that tech savvy would have just given up even making an appointment.
It seems we’re heading head first into a second wave and we still don’t have the basics of testing working.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
