The Établissement Français du Sang (EFS), France's national blood service, confirmed that temperature and defrosting thresholds were raised to "very high levels" at cold-storage rooms on three of its sites, where blood products and biobank samples are held before delivery to healthcare facilities. In a statement the EFS said no health impacts have been identified and no blood products were lost: affected equipment was brought under control or neutralised, and stored products were preventively transferred to other facilities. The EFS was not targeted directly — like retailers hit in the same wave, it was reached through a third-party provider of refrigeration equipment. Businesses in at least 11 countries have been affected in this second wave (Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom), which follows an October wave in France; UK authorities have not attributed the incidents, and no group has claimed them. This is the first confirmed healthcare victim of the campaign and a warning for hospital and pharmaceutical cold chains, including in Australia.

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