Nearly 5 million
ALMOST five million patients are stuck on the longest hospital waiting lists since records began, official figures revealed yesterday.
At the end of February, 4.7 million people were queuing to start treatment, according to NHS England.
And nearly 390,000 of those patients have been languishing on lists for more than a year.
Meanwhile, the number of people in Wales waiting for non-urgent hospital treatment hit a record high of 538,861.
The huge backlog is a direct result of the pandemic – and health experts warned the impact could be “catastrophic”.
But despite the enormous pressures the virus is putting on hospital staff, it was also revealed our NHS stars have managed to deliver almost two million operations and other elective care during January and February.
Their heroics came during one of the busiest periods of the Covid crisis.
Tim Mitchell, vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England blamed the second wave of coronavirus for the waiting list numbers.
Brutal
He said: “The NHS had a brutal start to the year because of the second wave of Covid-19.
“Although we did see the number of patients with Covid decline in February, hospitals were still under huge pressure due to having to separate Covid and non-Covid care.
“Staff had to isolate, or were ill with the virus, and massive resources were needed to support the essential national vaccination effort.”
He added: “The most urgent operations, for cancer and life-threatening conditions, went ahead.
“But hundreds of thousands of patients waiting for routine surgery, such as hip and knee operations, cochlear implants and vascular operations, had treatment cancelled or postponed.”
In February, 387,885 people had been waiting for more than a year to start hospital treatment.
That is a huge rise from February last year, when the equivalent number was just 1,613.
People worried about cancer are among those who have suffered. Figures show GPs made 174,624 urgent referrals in February, compared with 190,369 the same time last year – a drop of eight per cent.
This followed a year-on-year fall of 11 per cent in January, but an increase of seven per cent in December 2020.
The number of urgent referrals for some people with breast cancer symptoms were also down, from 13,627 to 12,199 – a slump of 10 per cent.
But NHS England said February saw 22,000 people begin treatment for cancer, in line with February 2020.
And it pointed out the 174,000 cancer referrals made in this February was
twice as many as the number made during the peak of the first Covid-19 wave in April last year.
However Sara Bainbridge, head of policy at Macmillan Cancer Support, said the data “further illustrates the catastrophic impact of Covid-19 on cancer diagnosis and treatment”. She added: “Tens of thousands of people are still missing a diagnosis due