The ‘enormous strain’ on hospitals across the country is resulting in an increasing number having to divert ambulances to other sites because they are unable to cope.

Over the past week, 20 NHS Accident and Emergency departments in England issued diverts, with patients taken elsewhere. Hospitals still taking hospitals have witnessed long delays, with more than a quarter of ambulances waiting at least 30 minutes to handover patients.

All areas of the country are facing huge pressures, mainly caused by the high number of Covid patients, but NHS bosses in West Yorkshire and the south central area of England - covering Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Oxfordshire and Berkshire - have reported particularly severe strain.

Numbers of Covid patients currently in hospital across England have exceeded 16,000, rising to 20,000 once other nations in the UK are included. Current figures are close to the total seen in first Covid wave, in spring 2020, albeit more than half of those patients are in hospital for other reasons, but happen to have Covid as well.

Hospitals are also said to be seeing rising number of people coming forward for other conditions, including flu.

Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said: "We're very concerned about the real pressures across the whole health and care system. A very high number of hospital beds are occupied, and combined with staff absences and severe workforce shortages, this means that trusts can't recover care backlogs as quickly as they want to.

"Ambulance services are doing everything they can in these extremely difficult circumstances, but the extra pressures are leading to growing delays to handovers to busy emergency departments. This means that ambulances aren't able to get back out into the community as quickly as they would like."