Vaccine bookings affected as hackers shut down Rome region's website

"A hacker attack on the regional data centre is underway... all defence and verification operations are ongoing to avoid prolonging the cut in services," the region said on its Twitter account.

"Operations concerning vaccinations may be slowed down."

The region's website, www.regione.lazio.it, was still down on Sunday afternoon.

The site for booking vaccinations was also unavailable.

The President of the Lazio region, Nicola Zingaretti, also wrote on his Facebook page.

"A massive hacker attack against LazioCrea computer systems that manage vaccine bookings is underway tonight.

"We have reported the attack to the authorities and I would like to thank all the employees who have been working tonight to defend the centre and to return to normalcy"

The highly contagious Delta variant represents about 80 percent of new Covid-19 cases in Lazio, where 66 percent of the adult population has been vaccinated, the regional health commissioner Alessio D'Amato said earlier this week.

Nationwide, 60 percent of the population over 12 years old has been fully vaccinated, with 68.5 million total doses administered, the health ministry's website said Sunday.