A healthcare insurance company recently apologized for telling over 600,000 people that they were infected with coronavirus when they were not.
Tricare, the insurer for the U.S Military’s healthcare systems accidentally implied that hundreds of thousands of its beneficiaries had coronavirus when it sent out a recent email requesting blood plasma donations from COVID-19 survivors.
Military.com reported the error, which went out to recipients of the healthcare system in 31 U.S states and appeared as a call from Humana Military for recipients who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 to donate their blood plasma that would be used to help treat coronavirus patients.
“As a survivor of COVID-19, it’s safe to donate whole blood or blood plasma, and your donation could help other COVID-19 patients. Your plasma likely has antibodies (or proteins) present that might help fight the coronavirus infection. Currently, there is no cure for COVID-19. However, there is information that suggests plasma from COVID-19 survivors, like you, might help some patients recover more quickly from COVID-19,” the email read.
Many reported messages on social media from those confused about the email, stating that they have never even been tested for COVID-19. Remember, the people inputting this data are human and will make mistakes. That is a frightening amount of responsibility in someone’s lap and this is just one example of how easy it is for an error to reach across the nation. Many have already made mistakes in counting and reporting coronavirus cases to bolster their claims that some elements of the government are using the pandemic to damage the President’s chance of re-election.
The email had gone out to more than 600,000 people in the Tricare East Region. To date, around 31,000 people across the Department of Defense, have been diagnosed with the coronavirus, including service members, family members, civilian employees, and contractors.
Marvin Hill, a spokesperson for Humana, offered a statement to explain the error. “Language used in email messages to approximately 600k beneficiaries gave the impression that we were attempting to reach only people who had tested positive for COVID-19. We quickly followed the initial email with a clear and accurate second message acknowledging this. We apologize,” said Hill.
The Department of Defense had announced an initiative to collect 8,000 units of convalescent plasma by Sept. 30. To date, they have collected more than 4,600 units and have expanded its goal to 10,000 units.
It is not the time for a slip-up and I feel that a healthcare company, of all companies, should know that right now. But hey, producing faulty statistics is one of the left’s favorite activities.
