Calls to the London Ambulance Service have surged as patients struggle to access their GP due to the global IT outage, new figures have revealed.
The LAS said it received 6,849 calls to 999 on Saturday, a 60 per cent rise on the same day last year.
The disruption began when a flawed security update rolled out by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike knocked millions of devices offline on Friday, crippling healthcare systems and grounding flights across Europe.
Travellers were left waiting for more than 50 hours in Corfu airport over the weekend due to flight cancellations, while patients were warned of further disruption to NHS services this week.
Daniel Elkeles, chief executive of the LAS, said the service was facing “huge pressure” due to the outage, with 111 health advisors taking as many as 750 calls an hour on Saturday.
“It was one of the busiest days for the London Ambulance Service since Covid,” he said.
“Our teams are always here to help if you need us and we encourage anyone who needs our services to contact us, but please only call 999 if you have a life-threatening illness or injury.
“If it is not an emergency, GP practices will all be open today, please call them and wait for them to answer your call.”
The outage left GP surgeries unable to book appointments or access patient records on Friday, with many forced to return to pen and paper.
NHS England said systems were now back online but delays would persist this week as surgeries recover from the disruption.
Dr David Wrigley, deputy chairman of GPC England, the representative body for GPs at the British Medical Association, said the temporary loss of patient records had caused a “considerable backlog”.
“Even if we could guarantee it could be fully fixed on Monday, GPs would still need time to catch up from lost work over the weekend, and NHS England should make clear to patients that normal service cannot be resumed immediately,” he said.
Meanwhile, British holidaymakers were left stranded in Corfu for an entire weekend after their Tui flight to Manchester was cancelled due to the IT outage.
The cancellation forced passengers to book their own hotels for two nights or spend the entire weekend at the airport on the Greek island.
Around 6.7 per cent of all scheduled UK departures were axed on Friday, with others delayed, while 201 flights due to land in the UK were cancelled.
Crowdstrike said that “a significant number” of the 8.5 million devices that were impacted by the outage are now back online.
In a statement, the firm apologised for the disruption created by the outage and acknowledged its “profound impact” on health and travel services.
