The British NHS has warned of “ongoing disruption” to primary care services into next week due to significant delays and lost luggage caused by the global IT outage over the weekend.
The outage spread worldwide on Friday morning after an update from global cybersecurity company CrowdStrike took many Microsoft Windows PCs offline and a “Blue Screen of Death” appeared on the screens.
The company founder confirmed that the cause was a bug in the update and not a cyber attack, as some had feared.
NHS England reported that its systems were “back online in most areas” on Saturday afternoon, but were “still running slightly slower than usual”.
A spokesman said: “While practices recover from the outage of their IT systems on Friday, some areas may experience further disruption into next week, particularly to GP services, as practices work to rebook appointments.”
There were also significant disruptions in pharmacy operations on Saturday.
Nick Kaye, chairman of the National Pharmacy Association, said systems were “broadly back online and many local pharmacies have resumed drug deliveries today”.
However, he added that Friday’s outage “will have caused backlogs and we expect there will continue to be disruption to services this weekend while pharmacies recover.”
“We ask people to be patient when visiting their local pharmacies and some may continue to prioritise patients with emergency prescriptions from their GP,” he said.
Microsoft estimates that around 8.5 million Windows devices were affected worldwide, which is less than 1%.
But experts warn It could take weeks for the systems to be fully restored and problems were reported at airports on Saturday.
Andrew Evans, from Taunton in Somerset, said he waited for more than nine hours at Palma de Mallorca airport and claimed there had been little communication from airline operator TUI.
His flight to Exeter was scheduled to depart at 2:05am local time (1:05am UK time), but by around 10:30am local time on Saturday morning there were still no passengers on board.
“Our holiday has completely fallen apart at the end – it feels like we have been let down,” said Mr Evans.
“We went to the baggage carousel, but there was nothing there. We still don’t have our luggage.”
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Passengers on a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Portugal reported that upon arrival at their holiday destination they discovered that no checked baggage had been loaded onto the aircraft.
On Friday, around 167 flights scheduled to depart from UK airports were cancelled, while 171 flights scheduled to land in the UK were cancelled.
TUI said the company’s IT systems “remained unstable” and apologised to passengers. “We understand how disappointing this must have been and are aware that many customers were already at the airport waiting for their flight,” the company added.
The Port of Dover said early Saturday it was dealing with “hundreds of displaced” airport passengers and urged customers to make bookings before arriving.
It is assumed that the port was not affected by the global IT outage.
Doug Bannister, manager of the Port of Dover, said: “We operate a turn-up-and-go system here. However, we insist that you have a book with you on busy days, even if people do so on the way there.”
“The more visibility we have, the better.
“But we are here to help people who want to travel. So I would say to the displaced airport passengers: ‘Come on over. We have the capacity.'”
The National Lottery app and website were down on Saturday – although it was unclear whether this was related to the global IT outage.
The travel delays come at a time when many schools are drawing to a close with the school year drawing to a close and thousands of families embarking on summer vacation.
Indie rock group Bombay Bicycle Club announced the new date of a music festival performance they had missed due to the global IT outage.
The British group was supposed to play at the Poolbar Festival in Feldkirch, Austria on Friday, but missed the performance due to a cancelled flight.
The show will now take place on Sunday, the band announced.
