The city asked the federal government for an exception, but about 1,776 people from the first-day of surge testing will have to retake the test due to a mislabeling error.

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell had asked the U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams and eTrueNorth to allow the botched tests to go through since the individual’s personal information is included in the kit, even if it wasn’t on the test tube.

Mia Palmieri Heck, director of external affairs for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in an email Monday that allowing the mislabeled tests to go through is not possible.

“This would be against the lab’s standard processes; they must be able to validate each specimen by comparing the patient information on the vial with the information on the voucher. They cannot process specimens that do not have patient information on the vial,” Heck said.

Heck said in an email Sunday that the lab already has sent about 1,000 patients a notice that they had an inconclusive result and informed them that they needed to retest. As it turns out, Caldwell said Monday that there were actually 1,776 mislabeled tests from the first day of testing mostly from the Kaneohe site and some from the Leeward Community College site.

Caldwell said Monday during a media briefing at Honolulu Hale that the Honolulu Fire Department did not receive proper guidance from eTrueNorth, which led to test tubes at the Kaneohe testing site to not be labeled.

Caldwell said since the problem was discovered, the city has ensured that the first initial, last name, and date of birth have been put on test tubes at subsequent locations.

Those with botched tests will be getting a second-email to schedule a follow-up test that doesn’t require that they wait in another long line, he said. Others who need to sign up for a test may go to doineedacovid19test.com.

>> RELATED: About 1,000 Oahu residents told to retake COVID-19 surge test because of mislabeling

Caldwell said Monday that he and Gov. David Ige have asked for another 30,000 tests and been granted them along with another six days of federal support.

Caldwell said he hopes the first-day glitch won’t discourage Oahu residents from getting tested.

“I believe everyone should be tested. Finding out where the virus is and where it isn’t is very effective in fighting this virus,” Caldwell said. “This is surveillance testing; it’s everyone coming and being tested that can. I’m hoping that at least 1/10 of the entire population of Oahu is going to be tested. I want to use every last test —all 90000 of them —need to be used up and then we need to take this info to fight this virus and come out into a better place.”

The testing, which began Wednesday, is part of a federally-funded initiative that Caldwell, Adams and Ige announced Tuesday. Some 5,000 free tests a day, up to 60,000 over a roughly two-week period, have been offered to Oahu residents. The idea behind the federally funded surge testing program, which has taken place in eight states, is to help officials in high-risk communities identify where the virus is so they can take steps to bring down positivity rates and ease hospitalizations.

As of Saturday, Heck said 2,451 individuals who had been surge tested in Honolulu had received their results. Of those, 27 — or just over 1 percent — had come back positive and 2,424 negative she said.

Heck said so far none of the other states have had mislabeling issues like what has happened in Honolulu. As of the start of this morning, Heck said 37,765 vouchers have been generated for the testing program. However, she cautioned that some people ultimately will cancel or fail to show up for tests.

This breaking news story will be updated again.