Appointments are being impacted at Kenilworth medical centres due to a international IT issue.

In a notice to patients Castle Medical Centre said it is unable to access patient medical records or process prescriptions.

Telephone appointments are also being cancelled and no new appointments can be booked.

Some face to face appointments are still being kept today.

Services at Abbey Medical Centre are also being impacted.

The announcement comes as a major IT outage caused by Cyber-secruity firm Crowdstrike updating its antivirus software has caused havoc for computer systems across the globe.

"Unfortunately, we are affected by the global IT outages, this is affecting our clinical systems infrastructure significantly (EMIS Web), meaning we cannot access patient medical records or process any prescriptions," Castle Medical Centre said.

"Our local IT engineers are frequently monitoring developments, providing updates where they can and are working to get a resolution as soon as possible.

"At the moment, we are unable to book any new appointments or make amendments to existing appointments in the future.

"We are not able to fulfil any telephone appointments already booked, process electronic consultations, issue repeat prescriptions, or answer most administrative queries.

"If you already have a face-to-face appointment booked at the practice today, we are seeing patients who need assistance today, ahead of the weekend.

"We will update you as soon as this is resolved, and we are very sorry to everyone affected by this.

"Thank you for your patience and understanding."

Meanwhile Abbey Medical Centre said: "Unfortunately there is national and International IT system outages that are causing our clinical systems to not work.

"This is currently being worked on by our providers and we will inform you once appointments are back up and running.

"Apologies for the inconvenience we appreciate how frustrating this is for all involved."