NHS England and pharmacies warned of delays and slower than usual services today, as the health sector continues to recover from Friday’s global IT outage.

The health service said patients with appointments this week should continue to attend unless told not to, while the chairman of the National Pharmacy Association has asked people to be patient as pharmacists work to catch up on the backlog of prescriptions.

It comes after the British Medical Association (BMA) warned on Sunday that normal GP service “cannot be resumed immediately” after the outage caused a “considerable backlog.”