Botched Excel Import May Have Caused Loss Of 15,841 UK COVID-19 Cases
Looks like someone tried to load a file of nationwide Coronavirus test results into Microsoft Excel, and exceeded its maximum-row limit <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/excel-glitch-may-have-caused-uk-to-underreport-covid-19-cases-by-15841/>. The omission has since been fixed.
I wrote:
Looks like someone tried to load a file of nationwide Coronavirus test results into Microsoft Excel, and exceeded its maximum-row limit <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/excel-glitch-may-have-caused-uk-to-underreport-covid-19-cases-by-15841/>. The omission has since been fixed.
According to this report <https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/05/excel_england_coronavirus_contact_error/>, the fix involves dividing the data across two spreadsheets.
Commentary <https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/06/excel/> on the screwup of COVID-19 case reporting by Public Health England caused by over-reliance on Microsoft Excel, pointing out that over-reliance on Excel has become something of a pandemic in the IT world in its own right. So what else should you use, that ordinary people can handle? The obvious answer is some kind of DBMS, since those can scale to very large amounts of data. How to make them manageable for users unskilled in SQL or database design? We already have GUI tools for that. Some reader comments mention Microsoft Access: the more versatile option would be something like LibreOffice Base, which can interface to a whole range of DBMS backends, including both SQLite and MySQL. Once somebody with the right database skills has created the schema, it should be possible to leave the daily data maintenance and reporting to an office staffer with more regular skills.
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro