A labeling mix-up was to blame for a San Diego hospital mistakenly releasing a patient infected with the coronavirus, officials said Tuesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it mistakenly believed the woman was among a group at UC San Diego Medical Center whose samples tested negative for the coronavirus — because the agency and hospital were using different labeling systems.

“It was an issue with the labeling,” Dr. Christopher Braden with the CDC said Tuesday. “They have their procedures, we have our procedures. They didn’t match exactly.”

Hospital officials said Tuesday that it uses pseudonyms to protect patient privacy and the CDC “used different naming protocols that were not shared with our institution.”

The woman’s specimen was, in fact, in a different batch of the samples from the patients who came back negative, officials said.

But the CDC directed the hospital to release the woman, who had previously been staying at the Marine Corps Air Station after she was evacuated from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicenter of the outbreak.

She was returning to the military base Monday when her test results came back showing she tested positive for the coronavirus, officials said.

As they approached the base, officials received a text that said there was an important message.

The woman had not interacted with other evacuees and was returned for observation at the hospital, where she’s doing well with minimal symptoms, according to officials.

The case – the seventh in California — is the 13th to be confirmed in the US.

Evacuees at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar were released Tuesday following a two-week quarantine.

With Post wires