Transport and pharmacies affected by global IT outage

Phil Langley said flights were still leaving Norwich airport this morning with "no issues whatsoever"

Transport services and pharmacies across Norfolk have been affected by a global IT outage.

Greater Anglia said some stations were affected and the situation was being investigated with "high importance".

Great Northern Rail earlier said it was unable to access "driver diagrams at certain locations" but access to key systems had later been restored and advised people travelling to allow extra time for delays.

Ryanair, which operates flights out of Norwich Airport, and Norwich City FC Supporter Relations said they were also experiencing problems.

Phil Langley said Norwich Airport had "contingencies for various failures"

KLM, which operates out of Norwich Airport, said the issue had made flight handling "impossible" and at 16:30 BST said "many flights have been delayed or cancelled out of necessity".

It said disruptions were expected to continue on Friday evening and into the weekend while it restarts flight operations.

Phil Langley, operations director at Norwich Airport, said although its systems were not affected they were having to check passengers in manually and aircrafts were being given “slot times” to ease the flight system.

He said: "We are used to this, we have contingencies for various failures.

"Check with your airline regularly… and get the latest information from them."

Norwich City FC Supporter Relations said it was experiencing issues with online card payments

Norwich City FC Supporter Relations said it was experiencing issues with online card payments and it was "doing all we can to get this working as quickly as possible".

The computing problem had also affected healthcare.

Mark Jackson, the manager at Hurn Chemist in Norwich, said there were issues "from the moment I got in".

He said: "Anybody who is coming in for prescriptions we have to tell them to go away, go back to the surgery and get the old fashioned FB10s - which is the old green prescriptions - and then get that signed off by the doctor, to come back again."

Mr Jackson said the pharmacy has "worked hard" this month after suffering medication shortages and said the IT outage was an "added cherry on top".

Mark Jackson said they could only dispense prescriptions that did not have a barcode

An NHS spokesperson said: "The NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with EMIS, an appointment and patient record system, which is causing disruption in the majority of GP practices.

"The NHS has long-standing measures in place to manage the disruption, including using paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual phone systems to contact your GP.

"There is currently no known impact on 999 or emergency services, so people should use these services as they usually would.

"Patients should attend appointments unless told otherwise. Only contact your GP if it’s urgent, and otherwise please use 111 online or call 111."

The three major hospitals in Norfolk, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn, the James Paget University Hospital in Gorleston and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital said they had not been affected.

Crowdstrike, a cyber-security firm admitted the problem was caused by an update to its antivirus software which is used to protect Microsoft Windows devices from malicious attacks.

Microsoft said it was taking "mitigation action" to deal with the "lingering impact" of the issue on its systems.