Health authorities said on Thursday that almost three thousand people who tested for Covid-19 were sent erroneous text messages about their results, and among them were six people who tested positive but were wrongly told they were negative.

In a statement, the Hospital Authority (HA) said one of the vendors helping with Covid-19 testing had sent messages to 2,972 people informing them of other people's test results.

The vendor said incorrect identity information was found during the SMS message handling process.

For the six patients who were positive but were told otherwise, the HA said by the time the contractor doing the testing notified it on Wednesday, they were already in isolation in hospital.

A spokesman said none of the six had "unduly stayed in the community".

The authority said it had asked the vendor to review its notification system to prevent similar blunders, and had reported the mix-up to the privacy commissioner.

On Wednesday, Hong Kong reported 85 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the SAR's tally of confirmed cases to 5,866. Most of the infections in recent days have been linked to dance studios