NHS bosses have stressed that hospitals in England are already at peak winter levels for bed occupancy, with growing fear that the health service will come under severe pressure in the months ahead.

Speaking to Times Radio, Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said that the situation was unprecedented and ‘very worrying’ as exhausted hospital staff prepare for higher levels of coronavirus and other respiratory infections such as influenza while dealing with a backlog of care for patients.

Hopson said: “What’s very, very striking in talking to our trust chief executives is how worried some of the very long-term leaders, who’ve been around a long time, are at this point. What they are saying to us is they’ve never been so worried.

“The accident and emergency pathway is very, very busy. So at a point when our staff are really exhausted, it is very worrying. The bit that’s particularly worrying is … if you look at acute hospitals, where effectively you look at bed occupancy, which is a very good measure of how busy a hospital is, we’re seeing bed occupancy levels, it’s sort of 94, 95, 96 per cent at this point, before we’re into peak winter. We’ve not seen that before. That’s unprecedented. So, there’s a real sense that the NHS is going to be under real pressure.”

Beyond concerns about bed capacity, Hopson said he was ‘very worried’ about the move to make coronavirus jabs compulsory for NHS staff from April, saying that the approach risks a significant loss of a significant number of staff, ‘just at the point when we cannot afford to lose those staff’.