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The waiting list projections by the NHS Confederation for hospital treatment show that the NHS waiting list is expected to rise from about 4.2 million currently to about 10 million by Christmas 2020.
Hospital bosses say that such a massive increase in England is a realistic prospect, given so many people have been unable to have surgery and crucial diagnostic tests in recent months. The NHS Confederation said healthcare services were operating at a reduced capacity of about 60% because of infection control measures.
The total number of people waiting to undergo a procedure in a hospital in England such as a hernia repair, cataract removal or hip or knee replacement stood at 4.4 million before the pandemic.
However, the NHS Confederation estimates that it is likely to reach 9.8 million by the end of 2020 as a result of staff shortages and hospitals having to cap the number of patients they can treat at any one time because of strict physical distancing rules that reduce the number of beds available.
A “pessimistic” scenario (where a second wave of the virus emerges) waiting list numbers are predicted to hit 10.8 million. Even under the confederation’s best-case “optimistic” scenario, about 8.1 million people would be waiting.
Any of those three totals would be far in excess of the record 4.5m number of people who have ever been on the referral to treatment waiting list.
