Procedures cancelled after cyber attack affects major London hospitals
A number of procedures have been cancelled or redirected to other NHS providers after a ransomware attack struck major hospitals in the capital.
King’s College Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’, including the Royal Brompton and the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, and primary care services were hit by the attack on pathology partner Synnovis on Monday.
Synnovis “was the victim of a ransomware cyberattack”, according to chief executive Mark Dollar.
“This has affected all Synnovis IT systems, resulting in interruptions to many of our pathology services,” he said.
The hospitals have declared a “critical incident” which is having a “major impact” on the delivery of services, with blood transfusions particularly affected.
Mr Dollar said the immediate impact is on patients using NHS services within the hospitals, as well as GP services across Bexley, Greenwich, Lewisham, Bromley, Southwark and Lambeth boroughs.
“We are incredibly sorry for the inconvenience and upset this is causing to patients, service users and anyone else affected,” Mr Dollar said.
“We are doing our best to minimise the impact and will stay in touch with local NHS services to keep people up to date with developments.”
Some procedures and operations have been cancelled or have been redirected to other NHS providers as hospital bosses continue to establish what work can be carried out safely.
One patient, Oliver Dowson, 70, was prepared for an operation from 6am on Monday at Royal Brompton when he was told by a surgeon at about 12.30pm that it would not be going ahead.
“The staff on the ward didn’t seem to know what had happened, just that many patients were being told to go home and wait for a new date,” he said.
“I’ve been given a date for next Tuesday and I am crossing my fingers – it’s not the first time that they have cancelled, they did it on 28 May too, but that was probably staff shortages in half-term week,” he said.
A spokesperson for NHS England London region said the attack was having a “significant impact” on services at Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts and primary care services in south-east London.
“We apologise for the inconvenience this is causing to patients and their families.”
Emergency care continues and patients should still attend appointments unless told otherwise, the spokesperson said.
They said they would continue updating patients on the impact and how they can still access care, and are working with the government’s National Cyber Security Centre to understand what happened.
The cyber incident meant some departments could not connect to their main server.
A senior source told the Health Service Journal (HSJ) gaining access to pathology results could take “weeks, not days”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Cyber attack hits major hospitals
“Non-essential transfusions were paused when the incident emerged,” Sky News’ science and technology editor Tom Clarke reported.
“Anyone needing emergency transfusions, they’re having to proceed with pen and paper, as I understand it. Obviously, that will slow down the matching of blood and things like that.”
There are suggestions urgent and emergency care at the hospitals will be affected as they may not be able to access quick-turnaround blood test results.
Synnovis was formed from a partnership between SYNLAB UK & Ireland, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
It describes itself as “one of the largest pathology service providers in the UK” and aims to improve patient outcomes through “faster testing services and state-of-the-art laboratories”, according to its website.
Mr Dollar said Synnovis takes cyber security “very seriously” and the attack could happen to “anyone”.
“This is a harsh reminder that this sort of attack can happen to anyone at any time and that, dispiritingly, the individuals behind it have no scruples about who their actions might affect,” he said.
Read more from Sky News:
Male birth control applied as gel works faster than other methods
AI to watch every spoonful you eat
England’s first artificial cornea transplant hailed a success
“The NHS is in a difficult situation in the face of prolific threats, exacerbated by recent IT budget cuts, and it is now at its most vulnerable to cyberattack,” Deryck Mitchelson, from cyber security firm Check Point, told Sky News.
“The healthcare sector is one of the most targeted industries globally with an average organisation facing more than 2,140 cyber attacks per week.
“The NHS holds a huge volume of valuable personal identifiable information that could fetch a big price tag if sold on the dark web, so it is important that we understand what has been extracted to fully appreciate the scale of the potential breach,” he said.
There have been a number of recent attacks on NHS groups.
Last month, a ransomware group released stolen patient data onto the dark web after an attack on NHS Dumfries and Galloway in March.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Julie White, chief executive of NHS Dumfries and Galloway, branded it an “utterly abhorrent criminal act”.
“We should not be surprised at this outcome, as this is in line with the way these criminal groups operate,” she said.
The health board is urging the public to be alert for any attempts to access their work and personal data.
A government spokesperson said: “Patient safety is our priority and the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and the National Cyber Security Centre are working together to investigate impacts from a cyber incident affecting a pathology provider.
“Support is being provided to the company and we are working with them to minimise the impact on services for a number of NHS organisations in South East London.”
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
Read more:
G7 summit ‘all about the Donald’ – analysis
Scrambled G7 agenda as leaders race to de-escalate Israel-Iran conflict
In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike