“Our concern was to notify positive cases. There is work to be done to recover all those who tested negative and were not notified. It wasn't because of incompetence, it wasn't because of ill will, it was because of the impossibility of proceeding with this notification", said Clélio Meneses

According to a press release, the government official spoke after being questioned by journalists on the sidelines of a visit to the Casa de Saúde de São Miguel, in Ponta Delgada.

The regional secretary said that the work of notifying negative cases "is being done" and reinforced that the "concern" of the Ponta Delgada Hospital was to communicate the cases that tested positive to covid-19, to prevent those people "from remaining in a situation of any risk of contamination from other people”.

Clélio Meneses considered the attack a "serious problem", which required an "immediate response", "day and night", to "prevent further damage" to other entities of the Regional Health Service or to "the Government itself Regional".

"The situation is being resolved, but it required a lot from the technicians in the region and, in this case, from HDES to overcome this problem, which is being overcome so that we can maintain the security of something that is, at this moment, essential that they are the test communications” to covid-19, he pointed out.

On June 24, the Government of the Azores reported having detected "an attempt of external intrusion into the computer system" of the Ponta Delgada Hospital, for which a contingency plan was triggered.

"Having been detected an attempt of external intrusion into the informatics system of the Hospital do Divino Espírito Santo in Ponta Delgada, the Board of Directors informs that it is operating with constraints, resulting from the need to defend it and repel any malicious action", one reads in the note sent to the newsrooms that day.

On Saturday, the president of the Government of the Azores, José Manuel Bolieiro, expressed concern about the “serious” cyberattack and considered it important for the region to “prepare properly for these computer attacks, which are obviously malicious”.