Walgreen stores go offline due to technical glitch

(Reuters) - Pharmacy chain Walgreen Co suffered a system outage for several hours on Friday, taking all of its 8,200 pharmacy outlets offline and delaying prescription orders. The company faced a "technical issue" during a system update and had to bring the entire system offline to resolve it, spokesman Michael Polzin said. Some prescription orders may have been lost as a result of the outage, Polzin said, but most were queued and processed when the system was restored. The pharmacy system was back online by 02:00 p.m. ET (7:00 a.m. BST). Shares of Walgreen closed at $61.05 on Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. (Reporting by Ramkumar Iyer in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)