CANADA, July 19 - Adrian Dix, Minister of Health, has released the following statement in response to the global system disruption that is affecting many health-authority-owned facilities: 

“Over the night of Thursday, July 18, 2024, B.C. was made aware of a global system disruption that is affecting many health-authority-owned facilities, including hospitals. Emergency services, including 911 and ambulances, are not impacted by this disruption and are operating as usual.

“We know that this disruption is impacting some patients and their families, and health authorities are working to get their systems back up as soon as possible.

“Our primary concern is the continuity and quality of patient care. We have implemented contingency plans to ensure that our health-care services remain operational and that patient care is not disrupted to the best of our ability.

“Staff at the Provincial Health Services Authority remain in contact with Crowdstrike, a global cybersecurity firm used by organizations around the world that generated this outage, to discuss solutions. Further investigations are underway to assess the extent of the disruption and a provincial emergency operations centre was activated to assess and mitigate impacts.

“I would like to thank the health-care workers and everyone who has been working on this disruption overnight. An initial group of IT staff were deployed in the early hours of Friday, July 19, 2024, to health-authority-owned facilities to provide IT support and more are on the way.

“During this period, there may be some impacts to our staffing systems, and we apologize in advance for any inconvenience caused by unplanned service interruptions that may occur.”