COVID DATA BREACH?

[JacinthaBoggs]

Hello all! First time poster but admiring your work for years. I'll get to the point.
A colleague took time off work recently as her daughter (6) had suspected covid 19. Our manager texted her stating
'Can you contact Public Health to chase up your daughters covid result. I have tried but they won't let me know the result. They asked me to get you to give them a ring so we can get you back to work. Don't worry- "everything is ok".'
Within 5 minutes my colleague had a call from Public Health to tell her jer daughter was negative. I should add we are NHS employees.
So, is this a breach of of data protection laws constituting a criminal offence, or just a breach of local policy. What should she do?
Any advice would help please
Thank you

I think so.
Why was a manager attempting to accessing an employee's relative's test results?!
How did s/he even know the child's details to ask?
The world is losing the plot!

As NHS employees we are prohibited from accessing medical records unless they are patients under our care or if there is what they call a "valid business reason", i.e. they will access a staff member's covid result in order to get them back to as quickly as possible

You'd be surprised how much personal information the NHS has access to

It doesn’t sound like a breach. Your manager tried to get the results but they refused to give her them. They probably said they can only give them to a parent / legal guardian hence the manager asking the parent to ring up.
There is probably a policy breach by the manager but not GDPR. It’s something that could definitely be raised with HR if they are unhappy.

I'm assuming the "everything is ok" is what public health said to the manager, in other words, 'she hasn't got it but we can't officially tell you that so get her to call up'?

Your manager didn't get the result. The "everything is ok" may mean they gave him a hint or it may mean the manager was reassuring your colleague that they weren't in trouble. If they gave him a hint that could be classed as a data breach but it depends exactly what they said. If they didn't give him a hint I don't see any data breach.

I took it as the previous poster interpreted it.

Really they shouldn't have called nhse for the results, but ask colleague to confirm.

The while point of these tests is so that workers can come back asap after negative results rather than wait 2 weeks so it is expected that these are shared with manager as soon as available.

Ps, could also be a coincidence. I was on the phone with DD asking about her antibodies results, she said she was still waiting, 1/2 hour later she had the results in an email.

The manager shouldn't have tried to get the results, but it's certainly not a criminal offence.
The manager was probably very keen to get the employee back to work and thought they should have been chasing the results themselves. They are probably very glad that the child doesn't have Covid, and the employee can get back to work.