Lives will be put at risk because of record-breaking flu hospitalisations and ‘reckless’ doctor strikes, officials have warned.
The British Medical Association (BMA), which plotted the five day walkout, is demanding a 26 per cent pay rise.
Resident doctors have already seen their pay balloon by 28.9 per cent over the past three years and each five day walkout costs the NHS around £300million in lost activity and overtime payments to covering consultants.
But bosses fear the ‘unparalleled’ disruption — at a time when hospital staffing rotas are ‘very fragile’ because of upcoming Christmas holidays and winter illness — will also see patients left at greater risk of ‘unacceptable care’.
The number of hospital beds in England occupied by infected flu patients is already higher than ever for this time of year with ‘no peak in sight’.
Britain’s medical leaders believe the UK could face its worst flu season to date — with some hospitals already declaring critical incidents, imposing face mask rules and banning visitors.
Hospital consultants have also warned surgeries have already been cancelled because of rising flu cases despite the NHS ‘already running on thin ground’.
Despite pleas to the BMA to ‘end their painful dispute’ as safety fears increase, the action from December 17 until December 22 is still set to go ahead.
Pictured, patients queue on trollies to get into A&E this morning at Royal London Hospital in Whitchapel as flu cases rise in the capital
Dennis Reed, director of senior citizen campaign group Silver Voices, told the Daily Mail: ‘The resident doctors have deliberately chosen the worst possible time for this strike, with thousands of sick and frail senior citizens stuck in undignified and draughty corridors, and in the middle of a serious flu epidemic.
‘What a Christmas lies in store if you urgently need the NHS over the holiday season.
‘The BMA should show some festive goodwill and charitable spirit of the season and postpone their strike until the winter crisis is over.’
Sir Jim Mackey, NHS England CEO, also said: ‘This is totally reckless behaviour from the BMA Committee.
‘The timing of the latest industrial action is clearly designed to maximise disruption of patient care, coming just as flu cases are surging and we enter the most dangerous time of year for hospitals.
‘The NHS has done everything in the last two rounds of BMA Industrial Action to minimise disruption, but the BMA Resident Doctors Committee absolutely know it will take a monumental effort to keep patients safe this time, which makes this a shameful decision to have taken.
‘It also deprives hard-working NHS colleagues — who have worked so hard this year on NHS recovery — of Christmas with their families, with many now likely to be called in on their well-earned days off.’
In an unprecedented intervention, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AMRC), which represents the UK and Ireland’s 22 royal colleges, also urged the BMA to ‘abandon guidance’ which states medics should not tell employers if they are planning to strike.
NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey yesterday confirmed flu hospital admissions could triple or even quadruple by next week and could require a ‘national response’
British Medical Association (BMA) bosses claimed they had ‘no choice but to announce more strike dates’ after the Government failed to put forward a ‘credible plan’. Pictured, resident doctors on the picket line outside St Thomas’ Hospital in London last month
It said that NHS hospital bosses would be able to ensure cover is in place if they knew in advance how many doctors would be off work.
‘Today, there are ten times more patients in hospital beds with flu than there were at the same time two years ago,’ the academy said.
‘If managers were told which resident doctors are intending to take action, it would at least allow them to plan safely for emergency cover and perhaps consolidate resources on a regional basis.’
Dr Jeanette Dickson, chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, added: ‘It’s not for us to comment on the rights or wrongs of the industrial action and we genuinely take no sides in this dispute, but as the body that represents the cross-cutting interests of all medical colleges we are concerned about the impact on patients of a further five days of industrial action at this critical time of year.
‘So, we are calling on both sides to do everything they can to end this painful dispute once and for all and we stand ready to help if we can.’
Dr Chris Streather, medical director for the NHS in London added that ‘industrial action now is the wrong thing to do for the public of London’.
Speaking last week, Health Secretary Wes Streeting also said: ‘Just in the last week, we’ve seen 999 call volumes and A&E demand of a kind we normally only ever see on New Year’s Eve, which is the busiest night of the year for the NHS.
‘So the NHS is running hot at the moment, and industrial action is the last thing that patients, or indeed other NHS staff, need.’
He added that the forthcoming strike action was a ‘different order of risk and challenge’ because it does come so close to Christmas.
‘So we are having to look now, in advance of that strike action, at what measures we will put in place to protect patients,’ he said.
‘But what I can’t do, and what I won’t do, is sit here and pretend to people watching that there wouldn’t be disruption, that there wouldn’t be greater risk, that there wouldn’t be patients receiving a standard of care that I do not think is acceptable.’
Surveillance programmes that monitor the UK’s outbreak suggest flu hospital admissions in England are more than double last year over the same time period and ten times higher than 2023.
Figures show an average of 1,717 beds alone were taken up by flu patients each day last week, up on the 1,098 in 2024 and 160 in 2023.
Of these, 69 were in critical care — almost double the 39 logged last year.
Sir Jim, last week, also cautioned that flu hospital admissions could triple or even quadruple by next week and could require a ‘national response’.
At a board meeting of NHS England, he said: ‘I think it’s reasonable to assume there will be between 5,000 and 8,000 occupied beds around this time next week.’
The mutant H3N2 flu strain is believed to be driving the unprecedented number of infections.
The strain, dubbed subclade K or the ‘super flu’ by others, mutated seven times over the summer, helping it to evade previous immunity, sparking alarm among experts.
In Scotland, NHS Ayrshire and Arran has also cancelled ‘routine visiting’ across all its hospitals amid ‘significant pressure’ due to a ‘sharp rise in viral respiratory infections, including flu’.
One surgeon working at Lewisham Hospital also told the Daily Mail that the NHS was ‘already running on fairly thin ground’.
Mandatory mask rules have been imposed over recent weeks in parts of hospitals in London, Berkshire, Surrey, Lincolnshire, Shropshire and Oxfordshire amid alarm at infection numbers.
Resident doctors make up around half of all doctors in the NHS.
The BMA claimed first year resident doctor pay is 21 per cent lower in real terms than it was in 2008.
It wants pay for the group to be brought back in line with the level it was at 17 years ago, when they say their value of their pay started to be eroded.
The claim is based on a measure of inflation called the Retail Price Index (RPI) — this includes housing costs and shows higher price increases than some other inflation measures.
However, the Government says RPI is outdated.
Instead, it uses the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) to calculate inflation and pay increases.
CPI looks at the cost of goods and services based on a basket of household items.
Using the CPI measure, the government says resident doctors’ current pay is fair.
Analysis from health think tank the Nuffield Trust has suggested that pay has fallen 5 per cent since 2008 if CPI is used.