NHS staff dealt with the highest ever number of life-threatening ambulance call outs last month, new figures show today.
Ambulances responded to 82,000 category one calls across the country in December, an average of one every 33 seconds and higher than any other month on record.
Meanwhile, in total, more than 66,000 staff were off each day in December across the country.
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Weekly data, also published today, shows that around 46,000 NHS staff were off sick each day last week due to Covid – up from 12,000 per day at the start of December, before Omicron began to spread rapidly in the community.
More than 32,000 patients were admitted to hospitals in England with Covid in December alone.
In 2021, hospitals received more over 302,000 Covid admissions, as today's statistics show the NHS also had to contend with more than 10 million 999 calls in 2021 – the highest ever in a single year and almost a million more calls than the previous record (9.1m in 2019).
NHS National Medical Director Professor Stephen Powis said: “Omicron has increased the number of people in hospital with Covid at the same time as drastically reducing the number of staff who are able to work.
“Despite this, once again, NHS staff pulled out all the stops to keep services going for patients.
"There have been record numbers of life-threatening ambulance call outs, we have vaccinated thousands of people each day and that is on top of delivering routine care and continuing to recover the backlog.
“But staff aren’t machines and with the number of Covid absences almost doubling over the last fortnight and frontline NHS colleagues determined to get back to providing even more routine treatments, it is vital that the public plays their part to help the NHS by getting your booster vaccine, if you haven’t already.
“And as has been the case throughout the pandemic, if you have a health problem, please go to 111 online and call 999 when it is a life-threatening condition – the NHS is here for you.”
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