UNBELIEVABLY, the worst thing about the fact that we have just found out we have 218 extra coronavirus cases in Oxfordshire isn’t even the fact we have 218 extra coronavirus cases.

Of course, that in itself is very worrying: that is 218 people who have got this dangerous and potentially deadly novel virus – mums, dads, grandparents; our friends and family.

But on top of those extra cases is the fact that, because our health authorities in Oxfordshire didn’t know about these extra cases, they were not able to take the extra precautions they would have taken if they had known.

As our Lord Mayor Craig Simmonds said yesterday, if councils had known about these extra cases when they were first recorded, they might well have acted very differently last week.

But even that isn’t the worst thing about this monumental Covid cock-up: because the new cases were not passed to the Test and Trace service until Saturday, it means that for every one of those 218 people, all of the other people they have been in contact with were not contacted.

Even if we assumed that each of those 218 had only been in contact with one other person in those days, that’s still instantly doubled the potential number of cases in our county at a stroke.

In reality, of course, the number of contacts will be far higher.

And yet, we still haven't reached the worst thing about this news.

The real worst thing about this news is that this one cock-up by our Government is just the tip of the iceberg: it is just the latest in a string of cock-ups over the vital, indispensable Test and Trace system which health authorities say is vital to keep some kind of rein on this pandemic, and which our Government has nonetheless contracted and sub-contracted out to un-named private companies with no experience in many of the jobs required, and who seemingly cannot even use a basic piece of computer software like Microsoft Excel without getting it wrong.