Patricia Marquis, of the Royal College of Nursing, said the NHS was clearly ‘struggling to treat patients safely’. NHS medical director Prof Stephen Powis said the Omicron variant was putting huge pressures on hospitals, not just because of the numbers of patients being admitted - about 2,000 a day on average - but also because of staff absences. But he added, ‘Despite this, once again, NHS staff pulled out all the stops to keep services going for patients’. Pray for the Government to find a way to meet the financial needs of the NHS so that the six million people on waiting lists for routine operations and care can have their procedures. In December nearly 27% of patients arriving at emergency departments waited over four hours. Demand for ambulances is high, with crews struggling to reach patients within the seven-minute target.