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Computers in key clinical areas of Waikato District Health Board (DHB) are up and running after being hit by a virus this week.
About 3000 computers across the DHB's network were infected with the Conficker virus, forcing a complete shutdown after the worm was spotted about 2am on Thursday.
All wards and the emergency department at Waikato Hospital were back on line on Saturday afternoon, as were emergency departments in Thames, Te Kuiti, Taumarunui and Tokoroa hospitals, DHB spokeswoman Mary Anne Gill says.
Health Waikato chief operating officer Jan Adams said patient safety had not been compromised during the outage.
"Clinics ran as normal, including elective surgeries, and acute operating theatres also kept going."
The most disruption came with laboratory testing, which ran at 10% capacity until Saturday.
"What we have to remember is computers don't diagnose and treat patients, they help but doctors and nurses do that, and that's what they've continued to do," Adams says.
Conficker gained access to computers running Microsoft software by exploiting a security hole in the Windows Server service used by Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 Beta.
The security section of Microsoft's website said the fifth and latest version of the worm was reported in the "wild" in April this year.
Microsoft first encountered the virus in November 2008.
