Don't miss a thing by getting the day's biggest stories sent direct to your inbox Patients have become very familiar, in recent years, with the flurry of NHS headlines that routinely accompany the winter months.
Every winter there are fears about hospitals collapsing. Every winter there is talk of unprecedented strain, of a burnt-out NHS workforce. ‘Winter pressures’ funding has become part of the system’s furniture - an acknowledgement that extra cash is needed to help.
But this year, just as ministerial rhetoric is reaching peak freedom and preaching the pandemic’s demise, a midwinter-scale crisis has hit the health and social care system not in January, but slap bang in the middle of June.
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