'Concerning' pharmacy backlogs will continue after global Microsoft and Crowdstrike IT outage

Pharmacist chiefs have warned that services will continue to be disrupted this weekend after the global IT outage that affected computer systems around the world.

A Microsoft Windows issue left banks, airlines, telecommunications firms, TV and radio broadcasters and supermarkets experiencing outages following the appearance of blue screen of death error on screens worldwide. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike - which provides security protection for cloud software including the Microsoft 365 platform - said a corrupted update file on Windows hosts was the cause of the problems.

The fallout was worldwide, and the NHS was heavily hit. Across England, GP surgeries have reported being unable to book appointments or access patient records as their EMIS Web system went down. Some hospital trusts also reported problems - with one trust declaring a critical incident.

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CrowdStrike’s chief executive said the cybersecurity firm’s customers “remain fully protected” despite the global IT outage. In a new statement posted to X, formerly Twitter, yesterday afternoon (July 19) George Kurtz said: “Today was not a security or cyber incident. Our customers remain fully protected.

“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on.

“As noted earlier, the issue has been identified and a fix has been deployed. There was an issue with a Falcon content update for Windows Hosts."

But the problems continue, as flight delays and rearrangements go on today (July