West Midlands Ambulance Service dealt with 5,383 calls in 24 hours on 4 January, its busiest day on record.

The previous record for the ambulance service was 5,001 calls in March 2018, but increasing hospital pressures brought about by coronavirus has resulted in hospitals being ‘extremely busy’. This impact on services during the start of the New Year has seen four patients spending more than five hours in ambulances outside hospitals.

The longest a patient waited was five hours and 39 minutes, with two of the longest waits at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham.

According to reports, at one point on the evening of 4 January, 15 ambulances were waiting to hand over patients outside New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton. In total, handovers had accounted for 759 hours of crews' time, equivalent to taking 63 ambulances off the road.

David Loughton, the chief executive of the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust warned its capacity would ‘soon be compromised’, especially as a two-week ‘lag’ means that things could get worst before they get better.