NHS Extends Suspension Of All 'Non-Urgent' Operations As Winter Crisis Deepens

Dickson continued: "In many ways the health service in England is better prepared than ever before, but that does not prevent a situation where hospitals are having to cope with unsafe levels of bed occupancy".

A hundred NHS officials now take home more than £150k, despite the health service struggling with massive cash issues.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said its frontline teams had also reported an increase in patient numbers, with cases of respiratory conditions and norovirus particularly experiencing upticks.

The data held by Public Health England shows the flu season now underway across England and will spread to the rest of the UK.

Nearly every hospital in England has dangerously few free beds, doctors warned last night, with many so full in the run-up to Christmas the sight of patients on trolleys in draughty corridors has become routine.

The restrictions are set to last until at least the end of January and are predicted to affect around 55,000 operations.

Earlier, Dr Richard Fawcett, an A&E consultant at the North Midlands University Hospital Trust, tweeted: I personally apologise to the people of Stoke for the 3rd world conditions of the department due to #overcrowding.

'Since the [Christmas] bank holiday things have escalated rapidly and we are on the cusp of a major issue at least as bad as past year'.

NHS Lanarkshire said Hairmyres, Wishaw and Monklands hospitals had all experienced soaring demand in recent weeks, prompting the "exceptional" measures.

They are being dispatched in fire engines or cars to treat patients who have suffered cardiac arrests, strokes, fits or heavy bleeding.

Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, has said that waiting lists for surgery will rise and many new treatments will prove unaffordable because his £110 billion budget is not enough.

Cummings urged patients who thought that they were unable to attend an appointment to call up and cancel, stating that the money lost each year could fund 1 million cataract operations or 250,000 hip operations.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has warned of delays in its accident and emergency departments and asked people to consider alternatives to A&E.

"Mid Yorkshire is no better or worse than anywhere else", he said.

The last time the job felt so impossible for me was Mid-Staffs.

Some hospitals have barely had a single free bed since mid-November, recording night after night of being "100 per cent" full. He was due to have the operation at Basildon Hospital on December 5 but it was delayed to January 17.