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Wayne Hospital Officials Sort Out Details Of 42-Hour Phone Outage

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GOLDSBORO, N.C. — Officals believe a computer virus, possibly planted by a hacker, took out

Wayne Memorial Hospital

's phone system for almost two days.

The hospital said the virus struck its system at noon Wednesday, forcing hospital staff to rely on e-mail, two-way radios, cell phones and faxes to communicate. The system was restored at 5 a.m. Friday.

"We've got a lot of important business to do here. If there was someone with a malicious intent that did that, then that's just very unfortunate," hospital spokeswoman Amy Cain said.

Cain said no patients suffered from lack of communication, but the focus now is figuring out who and what were behind the phone virus.

"There's always going to be computer hackers who just for the fun of it, the thrill of it, who hack into the CIA or whatever," she said. "They don't necessarily intend to be a threat to national security. They're just proving that they can do that."

Hospital administrators have called in experts from across the country to investigate the cause of the virus.

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