A CVS Pharmacy in Solomons, MD.

By Chris Spiker From Daily Voice

CVS customers are having issues picking up their prescriptions after a system outage disrupted some of the chain's network connections.

The Rhode Island-based pharmacy chain confirmed the issue in a social media post at 12:31 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 21. Customers went online to report being turned away for prescriptions, flu shots, and basic services as stores struggled to process orders.

CVS confirmed to The Hill that its outage is unrelated to the Amazon Web Services disruption that caused widespread problems for apps and companies on Monday, Oct. 20. 

Those with outages from the AWS incident included Amazon, Delta Air Lines, Lyft, Reddit, Ring, Roblox, Snapchat, United Airlines, and Venmo.

CVS replied to a frustrated customer to explain the issue.

"Currently we are experiencing a known system outage," the company posted. "We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and can assure you that we are diligently working on restoring service."

A CVS spokesperson told CNN that it's trying to fix the network connection issue preventing some pharmacies from fulfilling prescriptions.

"While most of our pharmacies can still fill prescriptions, some patients may experience delays," the spokesperson said.

While the CVS and AWS outages appear unrelated, the issues highlight vulnerabilities in digital infrastructure.

"When your customers can't access your service because your cloud provider is down, it doesn't matter how strong your front-end brand is," said Abigail Wright, a business-resilience expert at ChamberofCommerce.org. "The backbone behind it has to be robust."

CVS operates more than 9,000 pharmacies nationwide and announced earlier in October that it acquired roughly 60 Rite Aid locations after its former competitor went out of business.