NHS hospitals cared for more than one million patients without coronavirus while battling the peak of the winter wave of infections.

New figures show that more than 100,000 patients seriously ill with the virus needed hospital admission for treatment in January, a third of all those who had been admitted, up to that point, since the start of the pandemic.

NHS data shows that 1.3 million patients benefitted from non-coronavirus care in January compared with around 847,000 in April, when coronavirus admissions first peaked.

In the first month of the year, 961,000 patients received elective care – routine operations and other procedures – and 350,000 more got emergency care for other conditions. Comparing the first and second peaks, around 400,000 more people got pre-planned care and 70,000 more were admitted for emergency care during January’s winter spike than in April 2020.

Stephen Powis, the national medical director for the NHS in England, said: “Admitting more than 100,000 Covid patients to hospital in a single month inevitably had a knock-on effect on some non-urgent care.

“However, thanks to the hard work of NHS staff and the innovations in treatment and care developed over the course of the pandemic, hospitals treated more than one million people with other conditions in January, at the peak of the winter wave, nearly twice as many as they did last April. That is a testament to the skill, dedication and commitment nurses, doctors, therapists and countless other staff showed in the most challenging period in NHS history.”