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CVS says a system outage that prevented some of its pharmacies from filling prescriptions is over

<i>Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images via CNN Newsource</i><br/>A person makes purchases at a CVS in Miami Beach

By CNN Newsource

Published October 21, 2025 1:24 pm

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN

New York (CNN) — Some customers who were unable to fill or pick up their prescriptions at CVS locations on Tuesday because of technical issues may want to go back to the pharmacy.

A CVS spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday that the company has resolved a network connection issue that prevented some pharmacies from delivering medicine to customers.

“Some patients may experience minor delays as stores come back online,” a CVS spokesperson said.

Many people on social media complained earlier in the day that they couldn’t pick up their prescriptions or were being turned away for tests and flu shots.

“We are experiencing a known system outage,” CVS responded to frustrated customers on X. “We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and can assure you that we are diligently working on restoring service.”

CVS has more than 9,000 locations in the United States. Last week, it announced it bought around 60 Rite Aid locations following its former rivals’ closure after six decades in business. It’s not clear that had anything to do with CVS’ outage Tuesday.

The system outage came a day after Amazon Web Services experienced issues of its own and inconvenienced millions of people around the world.

Although the two events do not appear related, they highlight how much people rely on cloud-based systems for their crucial daily activities – and how vulnerable we are as a society when they go down for whatever reason.

The AWS outage Monday brought down a significant portion of the internet’s biggest apps, platforms, sites and services. For example, hospitals said crucial communications services weren’t working, and teachers couldn’t access their planned lessons for the day. Chime, a mobile banking service, was down, too, leaving people without access to their money. Ring and Blink cameras, along with most smart home devices, stopped working.