Thousands of travellers awaiting US passports and visas have been left on tenterhooks following an unspecified glitch in a database used by the Bureau of Consular Affairs, according to officials from the State Department.

“The Bureau of Consular Affairs has been experiencing technical problems with our passport and visa system,” said spokewoman Marie Harf in a press briefing last week. “The issue is worldwide, not specific to any particular country.”

Consular Consolidated Database (CCD) is built on Oracle software, and is believed to be one of the largest data warehouses in the world. It stores data on more than 100 million visa applicants and contains over 75 million photographs, with details of around 35,000 new applicants added every day.

The unspecified glitch occurred following schedule maintenance work last week that knocked the database out of action for “a few days”. Technicians have since restored “limited capacity” service, but the downtime has caused a backlog of passport and visa processing that’s going to take time to get through. It’s not clear if the problem was due to Oracle or the State Department’s IT staff, but Harf did at least make it clear that nothing malicious took place.

“We do not believe there was any malicious action or anything untoward here,” said Harf. “This was a technical issue, and again, we are working to correct it and should be fully operational again soon.”

It’s not clear how many people have been left waiting for their visas and passports, but US officials told the Associated Press that up to 50,000 persons were affected in just one unnamed country.

The State Department could not say how long it might take them to get through the backlog. It also refused to say when the database would be back up and running at full capacity.

“It’s going to take a little while, so we ask people to be patient,” added Harf.

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