The Northern Territory Health Minister has apologised after people in Alice Springs were wrongly sent text messages telling them they were casual contacts of a COVID-19 case.
The messages, sent on Boxing Day, sparked confusion for residents and health services in the town, where no new exposure sites have been listed since December 18.
On Friday morning Natasha Fyles told ABC Radio Alice Springs the messages were sent in error and there were no new exposure sites in the town.
She apologised for what she described as human error, and said she had sought a briefing.
She couldn't say how many people received the messages, and did not say if they had been contacted with a correction.
"It is obviously disappointing that this can happen, we can't have confusion," she said.
She said a change to processes would mean all contact tracing texts would now go through the main emergency operations centre "so they're double-checked and triple-checked."
The NT yesterday recorded 37 COVID-19 cases, the highest daily number in the course of the pandemic.
There are 156 active cases, with 21 people in hospital and none in intensive care.
COVID an 'added complexity' to chronic health staff shortages
Ms Fyles said it should be acknowledged that staff had been working hard over the Christmas period, but denied the text message error was a result of increasing strain on contact tracing and health staff.
Chronic staffing issues in the NT's hospitals and many remote central Australian health clinics have worsened in recent weeks as the ongoing local outbreak continues and case numbers linked to interstate arrivals rise.
Ms Fyles said it was normal for the NT to see health staff shortages over the Christmas and New Year period.
"We have had challenges in the primary health care space, in getting nurses into those remote communities," she said.
"But we don't have significant staffing issues across the Territory.
"But, staffing in health is always a challenge and there's been an added complexity with COVID added to that."
Opposition leader Lia Finocchiaro said the bungle was evidence of increasing "chaos" in the government's COVID response and said people who received the false-alarm texts would have been worried and distressed.
"Mistakes do happen, you can almost forgive that," she said.
"It's a mess and we can't afford to have this type of mixed messaging coming out of government."
She did not say if she supported calls for the introduction of a mask mandate in the NT, which Ms Fyles again said authorities considered unnecessary at this stage.
The NT is currently the only jurisdiction without a mask mandate in place.
