Torrejón, the first Spanish hospital 'kidnapped' by a computer virus

The University Hospital of Torrejón, in Madrid, has been in a "computer incident" since last Friday, which, as they report from the center, "has affected the availability of some information systems."

This incidence is, according to hospital sources, a computer virus that has blocked the systems to the point of closing access to patients' medical records and forcing professionals to make medical reports on paper with a tracing to recover that information when it returns to normal.

The aforementioned virus, whose existence the staff cannot inform patients, as indicated from the center's address, could have been intentionally introduced into the system, as has happened in other companies in Spain such as SER and Everis , which were subject to a ransomware- type cyber attack - Ryuk virus - that is, a cyber-kidnapping: hackers - in the case of Ryuk, of Russian origin - block company information to obtain a ransom payment.

If this information is confirmed, it would be the first known computer attack on a health center in our country.

The attention is given normally

According to official sources, despite the incident the hospital "maintains the usual care activity", and ensures that clinical care "is being provided normally in the different services and has not had to refer any patient to other centers for this reason".

However, several workers say that the assistance is being carried out with difficulties because the normal operation of the center since its creation has been based on technology.

As this newspaper has learned, after several days working in a coordinated way the internal computer team with the Directorate of Systems of the Ministry of Health, it has been possible to unlock a computer, and the goal is to return the operation as soon as possible at least one team per service. As they report from the hospital, "during the next few hours, several technical teams will continue to work to restore the entire computer service."

For their part, sources of the Ministry have confirmed that it is an incident located exclusively in Torrejón, without having affected the rest of the hospitals in the Community of Madrid.

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