Cyber attack means more hospital delays tomorrow

The malware infecting computers forced hospital chiefs to warn that people arriving at A&E today or anything but an emergency could face long delays and in some cases could even be sent away.

Now patients have been warned there could be longer than usual hospital or out-of-hours delays throughout the rest of the weekend.

A spokeswoman said disruption has been kept to a minimum.

Anyone affected by a postponed operation would be contacted directly, she said.

This evening chief executive Calum Campbell said: “We have identified the source of the malware and investigations are ongoing as to how this was able to infiltrate our network.

“Our staff have worked hard to minimise the impact on patients and our contingency plans have ensured we have been able to continue to deliver services while the IT issues were resolved.

“A small number of systems have been affected and these are in the process of being fixed.”

He added: “Unfortunately a small number of procedures and appointments have been cancelled as a result of the incident.

“I would like to apologise to anyone who has been affected by this disruption, however I can assure you that work is already underway to reappoint patients.

“The majority of services have been restored but it may take some time to get services running as normal.

“We would ask patients who are attending hospital or out-of-hours services over the weekend to bear with us as they may experience longer than waits than usual.”