Latest NHS England figures show:

• Busiest week this winter for ambulance arrivals at hospital – but time lost to handover delays 56% down on same time last year.
• Number of people in hospital with flu up by more than a third on the week before.
• Number of patients in hospitals with Covid-19 up by 72% in a month.

Sir Julian Hartley, NHS Providers chief executive, said:

"The numbers show considerable pressure continuing to mount throughout the health system while hard-working teams pull out all the stops to give patients safe, high-quality care.

"The effects of a six-day strike by junior doctors this week, hard on the heels of a three-day stoppage before Christmas, will be felt right across an already hard-pressed NHS.

"In winter, guaranteed to be one of the busiest times of year for the NHS, a double whammy of walkouts on top of sustained pressure including more Covid-19 hospitalisations is a perfect storm.

"Thanks to hard work and planning by trusts the NHS is reducing handover delays when people arrive at hospital in ambulances and cutting unnecessary hospital stays, enabling more patients to leave as soon as they're well enough to do so.

"But with longstanding, severe staff shortages – more than 121,000 vacancies today across NHS trusts in England – staff morale is low as heavy workloads take their toll. At the last count, stress, anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses were behind more than 27% of all sickness absences across the NHS.

"The government and unions must act fast to settle this long-running dispute and prevent more walkouts for the sake of patients and staff."

You can follow our analysis of the latest winter situation report figures from NHS England through our NHS Winter Watch campaign.