In an overrun A&E department, patients line corridors “packed in like sardines” as exhausted medics do their best to avoid falling victim to the “unprecedented” wave of super flu clogging up hospital beds.
Just two weeks before Christmas, top clinicians say this is the worst winter they have seen, with a “flu-nami” driving hospitals to the brink as services face a quadruple threat of winter bugs, an impending doctors’ strike, strict financial demands and patients stuck in hospital beds unable to be discharged into social care.
