ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A cybersecurity threat affecting the entire UNM Health Sciences Center is diverting ambulances to other hospitals, closing all clinics and sending some students Monday.
All ambulance traffic is being diverted to other hospitals and all appointments at all clinics Monday have been cancelled. This includes Sandoval Regional Medical Center.
“UNM Health patients should not show up to UNM Health facilities on October 26. Emergencies should be handled by 911 and non-emergencies should be delayed until further notice,” UNM Health spokesperson Chris Ramirez said in a statement.
The statement went on to say, “all non-essential personnel and all students enrolled at the School of Medicine, College of Pharmacy, College of Nursing, and College of Population Health” should leave campus for the rest of the day. This doesn’t apply to clinical employees or anyone identified as essential.
Scanner audio to Albuquerque Fire Rescue first responders indicated the ambulance diversion would last for at least the “ two hours,” as of 1 p.m.
The UNM Health Sciences Center opened an emergency operations center to try to prevent further attacks and to gauge the extent of the impact. UNM main campus spokesperson Steve Carr said the threat is not university-wide and confirmed it is only impacting HSC.
HSC has a wide range of research, academic and clinical areas as well as other entities like Tricore.
UNMH said classes will remain canceled on Tuesday.
Message reportedly broadcasted on employee computers
Alleged hackers reportedly broadcast a message to hospital workers’ computers, according to a partial recording KOB obtained. Officials haven’t confirmed the claims in this message:
The clip KOB 4 obtained as an automated voice saying “ us on Session immediately before we bring your university to the ground to the point of no operation, heavy lawsuits, and risk of closure. We have all of your student and employees’ data, personal identifiable information and SSNs, private documents, emails, and much more.”
Employees’ screens were also replaced by an image of red skull that had the words “Oh no, you have been compromised.”
“When I hear that somebody has all my personal identification and all this other stuff, the only thing I could think is, man, you don’t want to inherit that debt. There’s a lot of debt there. You, I mean, if you want to pick up that that bill to pay, that’s on your own behalf,” UNM Hospital patient Sirelle Ballard said.
“All our student data. That’s a little concerning…That’s very scary. I hope the university does something,” UNM junior Aubrey Valdez said.
Valdez said she found out what happened through from her Biology-Chemistry department head.
“She was like, “Hey, just so you know, if you’re on a if you’re on a university computer, just turn it off immediately,” Valdez continued. “A couple more people came in the lab and were just sharing that like when they were attempting to log on and stuff, some things were happening. Some things were popping up, saying like, “Oh, you’re being attacked. This is a malware attack. This is what’s happening.”
A patient’s perspective
“You could kind of get the sense of urgency from the staff and everybody just kind of ripping and running around like a chicken with their head cut off,” Ballard said.
Ballard said he wasn’t able to get the results from testing done over the weekend but emphasized employees were working hard to get things solved.
“Myself being in this situation, I’m a patient, and it’s important that I practice patience,” Ballard said. “The worst thing that we can do is feed into whatever they’re whatever nonsense that they’re concocting.”
UNM Health officials are “actively working to resolve this issue.”
A UNMH spokesperson issued the following statement Monday evening.
“The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (HSC), which includes the UNM Health clinical delivery system, experienced a cybersecurity event Monday, Oct. 26, 2026.
HSC information technology security teams immediately took steps to contain the event and protect the network. They also notified state and federal law enforcement and engaged external partners to assist with the investigation.
Leadership activated an Emergency Operations Center to coordinate the response and provide guidance to HSC employees, students and UNM Health system frontline providers.
From 12:30 to 2:30 p.m., UNM Health temporarily limited its acceptance of new patients as teams responded to the event. We are grateful to the health systems in Albuquerque and Santa Fe that worked with us to ensure patients had a safe place to receive care. System outages also required us to suspend outpatient surgeries and appointments for the remainder of the day.
At 2:30 p.m., UNM Health began resuming operations and bringing systems back online in phases, as it was safe to do so. We will work with patients to reschedule missed appointments and procedures.
As part of efforts to protect the network, UNM canceled classes on the Health Sciences campus and dismissed nonessential employees.
UNM Health Sciences academic and research units will remain closed Tuesday, Oct. 27. All classes, including online and remote classes, are canceled.
UNM employees in previously designated critical areas are expected to maintain their regular work schedules. UNM Hospital and UNM Medical Group employees are expected to return to work tomorrow. Students with clinical responsibilities should report to their assigned duty stations.
An update on outpatient surgeries and appointments scheduled for Tuesday will be provided later this evening or early Tuesday morning.
We recognize this event may have impacted patients, employees and students, and we appreciate their patience as our teams respond. We understand there are many questions. Because this remains an active law enforcement investigation, we are limited in what we can at this time.”
Tessa Mentus contributed to this report.
The full story
This article is one source in a clustered incident — the cluster page carries the summary, timeline and every other outlet covering it.
