One third of all Covid-19 patients in England's hospitals admitted in January 2021 alone

11 February 2021, 12:05 | Updated: 11 February 2021, 12:49

Almost one third of all patients who have needed hospital treatment for Covid-19 in England since the start of the pandemic were admitted in January, new NHS figures show.

The NHS data, released on Thursday, shows hospitals treated 242,307 patients confirmed to have Covid-19 during the whole of 2020.

This compares to the 101,956 Covid patients who were treated in January 2021 alone.

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These figures reveal the extent of the pressure placed on NHS services during the winter wave of the pandemic - and potentially due to action at Christmas.

Even now, hospitals are said to be treating more than a thousand more patients than they were during the first peak in April last year.

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They are also treating more people with COVID in intensive care units than they did for all conditions in January last year.

It comes as the NHS also revealed more than six million elective treatments were carried out in 2020 despite the effects of the pandemic.

A&E attendances totalled more than 18.7 million.

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Meanwhile, signs of recovery for cancer care were reported after 25,199 people began treatment in December - a rise of 555 on December 2019.

More than 200,000 people were also referred for cancer checks after and NHS campaign encouraging people to come forward, which also marked a rise of 13,129 people than the year prior.

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'NHS hospitals are facing a more challenging situation than ever'

"While the world's attention has rightly been on COVID, NHS staff have worked extremely hard to provide essential services for those patients who need them, including 280,000 treatments for cancer patients along with millions of routine operations," said professor Stephen Powis, the NHS national medical director.

"Even in January, when hospitals admitted almost a third of all the COVID patients they have treated during the pandemic, they were treating twice as many patients with other conditions as they did for those with the virus over the month.

"But the NHS remains under significant pressure so it is vital that everyone continues to do all they can to stop the spread of the virus by staying at home and following the expert 'hands, face, space' guidance."