As hospital beds fill up, seriously sick patients are sent to makeshift wards – cupboards, offices and corridors – to be treated by a doctor. Others are left languishing in waiting rooms, sometimes for days on end. In one particularly hard-hit hospital, a Costa Coffee cafe is turned into an emergency ward as medics struggle to cope with rising demand.
It’s only October, yet the picture across NHS wards up and down the country is one of concern, with medics telling The Independent they fear a winter crisis on a scale only seen at the height of the pandemic. One A&E consultant warns the health service is facing something akin to “armageddon”.
