Almost a third of all patients hospitalised with Covid-19 in England to date were admitted in January, according to NHS statistics.
The number of people admitted to hospital in England due to Covid-19 increased by 79% between December 2020 and January 2021, The Guardian reported.
There were 101,956 new Covid-19 admissions last month, equivalent to 29% of all Coronavirus admissions between March 2020 and the end of January 2021.
In December, evidence emerged that the Kent variant of Covid-19 was more transmissible than its normal form. This drove the prime minister Boris Johnson to urge families to limit the length and scale of their Christmas encounters.
However, families in many parts of the country were still allowed to mix for a day. In areas that were not considered high risk, pupils were allowed to return to school on the 4th of January 2021. This came right before the Prime Minister ordered a full lockdown that same evening.
When asked whether he had made mistakes and if he had acted too slow in the run up to Christmas, the Prime Minister responded in a live conference at the end of January: “Of course I take full responsibility for everything, and all I would say, humbly and respectfully, to those who make criticisms of what the government and all our colleagues have been trying to do, is that in situations like this, where you have such very, very brutal and difficult dilemmas, there are no easy answers, and very often there are no good answers at all.”
The NHS national medical director, Professor Stephen Powis, said: “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.”
In total, NHS completed more than six million elective treatments in 2020 despite the Coronavirus, whilst data showed that waiting times for non-urgent surgeries fell by 40% between July and the end of the year.
Cancer services have been recovering, with 25,199 people starting treatment in December, 555 more than in December of 2019. Following an NHS campaign which encouraged people to come forward for help, 200,940 people were referred for cancer checks, 13,129 more than in the same month the previous year.