It has been reported that hospitals have cancelled at least 13,000 operations over the last two months as they struggle to cope with record demand for NHS care and people sick with coronavirus.

The data, published by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, found that 13,061 planned surgeries had to be called off during October and November because of shortages of beds and staff. However, the cancellations occurred at just 40 of the several hundred NHS hospitals across the four home nations, so those 13,061 are likely to be a major underestimate of the scale of the problem.

The RCEM has warned that A&E units across the NHS are ‘verging on crisis’ because of their growing inability to provide timely care to the increasing numbers of patients seeking help.

A combination of record demand and hospitals’ difficulties in discharging patients who are medically fit to leave is causing what A&E doctors call ‘poor patient flow’ and ‘exit block’, when A&Es cannot treat and admit patients quickly enough because there are too few beds for them.