Watch here: N.L. cyberattack update coming at 11 a.m. NT as health-care outage drags into Day 5
CBC
Health officials are set to provide an update on the IT outages plaguing Newfoundland and Labrador's health-care system, as the disruptions caused by a suspected cyberattack drag into Day 5.
Health Minister John Haggie, Eastern Health CEO David Diamond and Pat Hepditch, a vice-president with the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information, will speak in a media briefing, live streamed on the provincial government's YouTube page, at 11 a.m. NT.
Officials have been cautious and cagey up to this point on the exact source of the problem, refusing to reveal basic details about what happened or even confirm whether a cyberattack is at the heart of the issue.
Sources have told CBC News that the computer network failure is due to a ransomware attack, a type of cybersecurity breach where hackers take control of a system and only let go once a ransom has been paid.
What is clear is that the outage affected what Haggie has called "the brain" of the IT system that handles the province's health care, resulting in thousands of cancellations in everything from surgeries to X-rays to ultrasounds.
Eastern Health, the province's largest health authority, has been the hardest hit, with staff reverting to a largely paper-based system to handle emergency care.
Newfoundland and Labrador's four regional health authorities continue to postpone some procedures and resort to largely offline practices to deliver others.
That status quo will last, at the very least, through Wednesday and Thursday, Debbie Walsh, Eastern Health's vice-president of clinical services, said Wednesday morning.
Amid the delays, she said staff are working on a contingency plan for when the systems are back up and running. Thanks to the experiences gleaned from the massive snowstorm of January 2020 and COVID-19 lockdowns, she said the backlog of appointments will be able to be rescheduled "within days."
But that rescheduling can only happen when the IT system is working again, a date thus far unknown.
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