County health finds a leaf switch still on an outdated image during AI fabric validation. What gate action is correct?

County health finds a leaf switch still on an outdated image during AI fabric validation; the correct gate action is to block go-live until that leaf is updated to the approved firmware or software image. Enforcing currency as a hard gate prevents a mixed-image fabric from entering the county health AI path with known skew that later produces asymmetric behavior under collective load. Proceeding to production and scheduling the update after the first outage weaponizes production failure as the upgrade trigger and exposes clinical inference to avoidable risk. Whitelisting the outdated image in the acceptance report without remediation falsifies compliance and trains the organization to paper over gaps. Disabling logging so version skew is less visible hides evidence instead of fixing risk and undermines audits. Domain 4 treats outdated switch images as failed confirmation until remediated. Caveat: emergency hotfix processes may exist for production already live, but acceptance of a new or revalidated fabric still requires the approved train—not silent exceptions at the gate. Operational check: hold county health go-live, upgrade the leaf to the approved image, re-confirm the version string and basic forwarding or fabric health, document clearance, then release the gate.