The cyber-attack that is causing serious disruption for hospitals and GP surgeries in London will take “many months” to resolve, a senior NHS source has warned. “It is unclear how long it will take for the services to get back to normal, but it is likely to take many months,” the well placed official said. “Key to a return to normal will be clarity about how the hackers gained access to the system, how many records have been affected and whether these records are retrievable,” they added.
Six NHS trusts and scores of GP practices in south-east London, which serve 2 million patients, have been struggling to deliver many types of care normally to patients since Russian hackers infiltrated and rendered unusable the IT system of Synnovis , a private firm which analyses blood tests. The ransomware attack, believed to be by the Russian Qilin criminal gang , caused such chaos that the NHS had to declare a “critical incident” when it occurred last Monday. Quilin’s modus operandi is to demand money from victims in return for giving them back access to their systems.
Trusts including Guy’s and St Thomas’ (GSTT) and King’s College have had to cancel large numbers of non-urgent operations , including procedures for cancer, and also planned caesarean-section births, because they are being forced to ration the number of blood tests they do. The NHS has not given any indication publicly about how long it will take for Synnovis to regain control of its system, from wh.
