Toronto hospital network declares Code Grey after Microsoft outage

TORONTO — Unity Health Toronto, whose hospitals include St. Michael's Hospital, declared a Code Grey on Thursday after an outage of Microsoft services that is affecting users around the world.

The network said in a statement that its staff are having difficulty sending and receiving email. It explained that a Code Grey is declared when infrastructure is lost or disrupted.

Health care continues

Unity Health said the outage has not affected the care of patients and residents, that its hospitals are safe and that they continue to provide care. It added that it will keep monitoring the situation until Microsoft restores services.

The network advised anyone who wants to contact a clinic or department about an upcoming appointment to call the hospital's main number if the matter is urgent.

Other health institutions affected

Separately, the University Health Network said its email services are temporarily down. A notice posted on its website said the outage does not affect the delivery of patient care.

Sunnybrook also urged patients with urgent appointments to call its main phone line, because its staff cannot send or receive email. The hospital said it is safe and continues to provide care.

Universities, colleges and transport services

Several educational institutions said their email services were affected by the outage, including the University of Toronto, Seneca Polytechnic and George Brown Polytechnic. Classes do not appear to have been affected.

VIA Rail said passengers may not be able to receive emails about their trips because of the outage.

Microsoft's efforts to restore service

Microsoft announced that it was investigating the problem at about 1 p.m. on Thursday, and has since posted a series of updates on social media about its work to restore service.

In an update posted at 5:09 p.m. Eastern time, the company said it is using every available avenue to restore service, because the steps it has taken so far have not produced the expected improvement. It added that it found a core process on the affected servers is under excessive load, causing a loss of capacity.

Microsoft explained that, to verify that recovery is possible, it is isolating part of the infrastructure and restarting the affected components, then redirecting traffic to them to confirm that services are stable, before applying the fix more widely.

What does this mean for the Arab community in Canada?

• If you have an urgent appointment at one of the affected hospitals (St. Michael's, the University Health Network or Sunnybrook), call the hospital's main number instead of emailing it.
• Do not put off going to the hospital if you need care. The hospitals say they are safe and open and that patient care is continuing.
• If you are a student at the University of Toronto, Seneca or George Brown, your emails may be delayed, and classes themselves do not appear to have been affected.
• If you are travelling with VIA Rail, you may not receive the company's emails about your trip, so check the details by another means.