Patients have been urged to attend A&E alone as NHS hospitals grapple with high demand amid rising flu cases.
Some hospitals have restricted visitor numbers while others are encouraging people to wear surgical masks to limit the spread of viruses.
Several NHS trusts have declared critical incidents due to “exceptionally high demands” in emergency departments, with a patient at one hospital forced to wait 50 hours to be admitted to a ward.
Around 5,000 hospital beds in England are occupied with patients with flu.
York and Scarborough hospitals requested public support by asking patients to seek medical attention alone where possible.
Dr Ed Smith, deputy medical director at York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said emergency departments are “exceptionally busy at the moment”.
He added: “While we understand it’s appropriate for a friend or family member to accompany with a child or as a carer for example, if patients can attend alone, this will help free up much-needed space for other patients.”
North Bristol NHS Trust, which runs Southmead Hospital, urged the public and staff to wear surgical face masks in its “emergency zone” to reduce the risk of infection.
(1/4) In common with NHS organisations across the country, NBT has seen a sharp rise in flu and respiratory illness over the last few weeks – and in particular since the start of January. pic.twitter.com/AfbnpMlg7w
— North Bristol NHS Trust (@NorthBristolNHS) January 7, 2025
East Sussex Hospitals Trust announced on Tuesday it was temporarily limiting visitors to one per patient per day to reduce the impact of flu.
A statement said exemptions will apply to end-of-life care, the special care baby unit and visitors for children under 16, while additional visitors may be permitted on compassionate grounds on a case-by-case basis.
Hospitals in Northamptonshire, Cornwall, Liverpool, Hampshire, Birmingham and Plymouth have declared critical incidents in recent days.
East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust declared the first critical incident in its history due to a combination of “significant patient demand, pressure within local hospitals and flooding”.
Critical incidents can be declared when health and care services are so busy that special measures are needed to restore normal operations and keep patients safe.
📢Due to sustained pressures at our Basingstoke and Winchester hospitals, we have declared a critical incident.
Our emergency departments are facing extremely high attendance levels. Non-life-threatening conditions will result in long waits. pic.twitter.com/CBBUJyEHV9
— Hampshire Hospitals (@HHFTnhs) January 7, 2025
Last week, NHS data revealed the number of people in hospital with flu in England was more than four times the level it was a month ago, with officials warning cases were “rising at a very concerning rate”.
Data being released later this week is expected to show another rise in the number of people admitted to hospital due to flu.
On Wednesday, Saffron Cordery, interim chief executive of NHS Providers, said working conditions for staff are “incredibly difficult” owing to inadequate NHS buildings with not enough room for patients.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the NHS is under pressure and flu is 246% higher than last year.
“What we’re also seeing is this challenge of flow of patients through the system and increasing demand, which has led to these critical incidents being declared across a number of trusts, and uniquely, actually across ambulance services as well,” she said.
“We haven’t seen that before, which really speaks to that level of demand.”
Ms Cordery said staff across the NHS “are putting in absolutely valiant effort in order to keep patients safe”.
She added: “I think what we need to do is recognise that these are really long-standing challenges that the NHS is facing in terms of workforce, shortage of workforce, the critical need to reform and properly invest in social care, and also to think more about prevention.”
Hospital estates across the NHS “are no longer fit for purpose”, she said, adding: “That makes working conditions incredibly difficult, and it actually limits the available space often to treat people safely.”
However, she urged patients who are suffering a life-threatening emergency to still call 999.
“We don’t want that situation where people are choosing not to call 999 when they really need it,” she said.
Annie Farrell, a GP in south Liverpool and chairwoman of the Liverpool local medical committee representing GPs, said there is “increasing virus overload in patients, increasing frailty in our patients, the numbers of patients that aren’t able to self-care for these kinds of conditions is going up”.
She added: “For quite a while now, we know as a GP that if we feel somebody needs to go to hospital, we’re having to sit down with them and say we’re sentencing you to potentially over 24 hours in a plastic chair in a waiting room.
“There will be care available – I know for a fact that our A&E department are doing their absolute best to manage everybody who is waiting for a bed in hospital in whatever circumstances they find themselves, so some of them are in backs of ambulances, and some of them are in the waiting area, but that’s what we’re faced with.”
NHS England’s national medical director, Professor Sir Stephen Powis, said: “Frontline NHS staff are under significant pressure and the demand is showing no signs of letting up, with latest data showing flu cases skyrocketed to around 5,000 a day in hospitals at the end of last year and multiple trusts across the country declaring incidents to help them to manage additional strain on services.”
On Tuesday, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he felt “distressed and ashamed” when he heard about some of the experiences patients are facing in the NHS.
At least one patient at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital was forced to wait for more than two days in A&E.
Non-urgent patients have been warned they will face long waits in A&E and have been urged to “consider other options” such as contacting their GP, visiting a pharmacy or calling NHS 111.
Dr Tim Cooksley, former president of the Society for Acute Medicine, described the situation at “appalling”.
“The NHS and social care services remain under immense pressure with many colleagues reporting this is the worst it has ever been in their hospitals,” he said.
“Each part of the system continues to experience demand beyond its capacity which exacerbates the problem. This is most vividly illustrated in urgent and emergency care.
“The media is full of pictures of patients in corridors, long queues of ambulances outside of emergency departments and stories of horrific patient experiences: this is seen and experienced by frontline staff every day. It is an appalling situation.”
Dr Cooksley warned that “pressures are at unsustainable levels and the results are scant justice for healthcare staff who strive to deliver a reasonable quality of care for the patients we serve”.
