Coventry and Warwickshire NHS trust: global IT outage is impacting services

In a statement, the trust has said: “The NHS has implemented long standing continuity measures in order to mitigate the impact of the IT outage and work is underway in order to fix the issue as soon as possible.

“Local NHS services are in close communication with one another and are working together to resolve the issue and ensure that the impact to patients is minimised wherever possible.”

Patients are being asked to continue to attend appointments as usual unless contacted and told otherwise.

To help ease pressures on primary care services, patients are being asked to only contact their GP if it is urgent. Otherwise, they are being asked to use NHS 111 online by visiting 111.nhs.uk or calling 111.

The outage is not affecting 999 and emergency services and people should continue to use these in genuine life-threatening emergencies.

The trust has said: “It is extremely important that patients consider which service is right for their health needs, especially during the current IT outage.

"More information on the appropriate service to use can be found on the Happy Healthy Lives website.

“Further information and updates on the IT outage and the impact to local health services will be provided when possible.”

Major IT outages have hit industries across the world today (Friday July 19).

Almost 1,400 flights have been cancelled and banking, healthcare and shops have been affected.