NHS Wales: Covid, flu and bed blocking push hospitals to edge

A long-term plan for health and social care is needed to ease pressure on the NHS, it's been claimed.

Welsh NHS Confederation director Darren Hughes said a staffing crisis in social care meant one in nine hospital beds were occupied by patients who should be discharged.

Covid and the flu outbreak were also affecting hospitals' ability to function.

Mr Hughes said: “We have got an NHS which was on a knife edge, struggling to cope, and has literally just been tipped over the edge over the Christmas period.”