A sequence of cyberattacks have disrupted COVID-19 vaccinations in Italy’s Lazio area—a big space that encompasses the nation’s capital, Rome.

The assaults, which seem to have been launched by hackers linked to a ransomware gang, quickly took down the Lazio authorities’s web site over the weekend, whereas additionally incapacitating LAZIOCrea, a third-party agency in command of scheduling and reserving vaccination appointments. Data related to a big public well being database was additionally encrypted, although the federal government has backups of the information, native outlets have reported.

ANSA, the nation’s main wire service, reports that the cybercriminals infiltrated LAZIOCrea’s methods as an “administrator” and had been capable of deploy “a malware that encrypted the data on the system.” In a Facebook post, the native authorities admitted that “operations relating to vaccinations may be delayed” consequently.

“At the moment we are defending our community from these attacks of a terrorist nature,” mentioned Nicola Zingaretti, Lazio’s governor, at a press conference. “The attacks are still taking place. The situation is very serious.”

Lazio’s well being supervisor, Alessio D’Amato, added that it was “a very powerful hacker attack, very serious… everything is out. The whole regional CED [the database] is under attack.”

The assaults seem to have interrupted the area’s vaccination efforts at a time when the “Delta variant”—a brand new, extremely transmissible pressure of the COVID-19 virus—is spreading across Europe. Italy additionally simply handed a brand new mandate requiring residents to indicate a digital or printed “health pass” (which proves vaccination) with a view to entry sure leisure actions, corresponding to theaters or indoor eating—making the timing of the entire incident notably problematic for the area.

Throughout the pandemic, hackers have ruthlessly focused medical establishments, exploiting the general public well being disaster and utilizing it as leverage towards their victims: Hospitals, public health websites, and academic researchers have all been attacked. It’s notably disturbing to see such morally unscrupulous techniques focused on the vaccination course of—a course of solely designed to save lots of lives—particularly for a rustic as exhausting hit by COVID as Italy.