New Year's plea issued with hospitals 'on track' for 20,000 Covid patients by Dec 31

mirror.co.uk:

Hospitals in England could be treating up to 20,000 coronavirus patients by December 31, dire projections show. The Health Service Journal estimates that the number of Covid patients in hospital is rising by around 250 every day.

The publication has warned that on New Year's Eve, NHS England could be treating more people with Covid-19 than it did at the peak of the first coronavirus wave - when 18,974 patients were in hospital on April 12.

According to the estimates, the NHS could be "overwhelmed" in days as it is "on course to exceed the first wave in the next few days and, possibly, top 20,000 on New Year's Eve".

The projections come as a health chief warned struggling hospitals were "wall-to-wall" with coronavirus patients on Christmas