Nearly half have been waiting for longer than the official target of 18 weeks on.

Doctors are warning that a second wave of the pandemic, especially during the winter months, could make things even worse.

In fact, more than 110,000 people in England have been waiting for treatment for more than a year.

That's the highest figure for 12 years.

More than 20,000 cancer patients did start treatment in August, but that's a reduction off 5000 on the same period last year On hospital admissions for Cove, it are still rising on they've doubled in the past two weeks.

Across England are, Health editor Hugh Pym reports from the hospital in Bournemouth, which is preparing for the challenges ahead eight in the morning on the pressures already on at the Royal Born with hospital.

I want to concert okay, next patient, any idea people are staying away from and is a distant memory.

She has regular stuff armed over the last couple of years, all the bays filled up overnight.

Now comes the staff hand over.

So she is a 24 year old lady again known to the mental health team who had crisis last night, irrespective of co vid.

Hospitals like this are facing up to the build up off the usual winter pressures here.

They've seen some of their busiest ever days in the emergency department.

Dr.

Far had Islam is a senior consultant here.

He's seen an increase in patients needing mental health crisis care.

It might be a call for help.

Might be a psychiatric problem.

Might be a self harm patient person that's got mental problems, mental health problems.

So you know we're seeing the whole array of patients.

But in amongst that, the rate of covert is increasing.

Co vid case numbers are relatively low in the local area, so I think that goal today was to try and clear another bay, if possible.

But at this meeting they need to work out how to make space while protecting other patients.

We do need to get another bay empty.

I completely agree.

We're still seeing numbers of patients come in with non Koven related conditions.

But we've got a small proportion of patients with David, and we are unable to mix those pathways.

So we need to find a way Thio do that safely.

Think wait a to peak.

There were 20 patients in intensive care here, half with co vid.

They've got room for mawr if needed, so we'll still fairly war from last time.

We're very used to having family members on intensive care unit and suddenly be told that we can't see those family members and they can't see a work that goes into helping their loved ones was very difficult for the staff on that.

Anticipation of having to go back to that is quite traumatizing for critical care staff.

So can you just take me through what we're doing?

Yes.

So we're actually gonna be doing a double war grief over here, which is the first time we've done this elsewhere.

They're preparing for the usual winter challenges creating a frailty unit to help the recovery of elderly patients on their safe return home.

Okay, so you can see by a nursing team, you see, bar surgical team.

Some patients like Christopher are coming back in for non urgent operations.

I'm having a we destructive.

Christopher's ankle operation was postponed in March.

He's pleased it's now about to be done, though.

The way it's being difficult.

Quite a lot of pain.

I'm not quite a heavy dose.

Painkillers.

It's difficult to walk really affect a lot more weight on my other leg.

Yeah, pretty tricky.

I asked the chief executive how they were tackling the backlog of operations put off because of co vid 19.

We've been going through a with the long waiters and really trying hard to get people have been waiting longer.

It's none of us want that for our friends and family on none of our conditions.

Want that Everybody wants to treat patients.

We know how awful it is when people have to wait a long time, so it's a top priority.

During the first surge, much of their focus was on the sickest co vid patients.

But now there are other worries as well.

If we see a flu season, if we see covered rising, how we balance start with keeping all the other patients who need to be treated in the hospital coming through in a timely way that that's going to be the biggest challenge.

It will be tough for staff, some still exhausted from their efforts earlier in the year.

But they all want people to know they're there and ready to help patients, whatever their needs.

Que pm BBC news Born with So let's take a look then at the official figures, and they show a significant rise in new infections.

17,540 were recorded in the latest 24 hour period.

On that is that from just over 14,000.

Yesterday means the average number of new cases reported per day in the past week is 14,520.

Hospital admissions, as we said, have jumped significantly.

On average, 528 people were being admitted every day over the past week.

That number does not include Scotland.

77 deaths have been reported of people who died within 28 days off a positive cove in 19 test on it means on average.

In the past week, 56 deaths were announced every day, which takes the total number of deaths so far across the UK to 42,592 so Now that we've seen those figures, let's talk to our health correspondent Lauren Ross.

We mentioned the new cases, Lauren and of course, this issue about rising admissions.

So let's take stock and what's the picture tonight?

We'll hospital admissions.

If we look at those, they're unimportant.

Indicator the scale of the pandemic because they show really, how many people are seriously unwell with coronavirus and if we take just England alone?

More than 500 patients were admitted toe hospital on Tuesday.

Now approximately 3000 are being treated in total.

But to put that into context at the peak of the pandemic there about 3000 new patients being admitted every single day on the numbers of varying across the country.

The northwest, the Northeast and Yorkshire in the Midlands have greater numbers in hospital.

Compared to, say, London on the southwest, for example, today we also got the latest figures for test and trace in England.

So these figures are up to the week off the 30th of September, and one of the important things to look out for here is that the test turnaround times we have a graph that we can show you now, which will show that by July when we look at those figures as they come out with show when people are going in person to get their test.

So that's going to a test center.

The test turnaround times in July were around 24 hours for those results coming back over the last six weeks, they've they've slowly declined.

And in fact, the latest figures show that just a quarter were returned within 24 hours and 24 hours is the target.

And time is critical with this to limit the spread of the virus and also to contact those who potentially may also have it.

And NHS representatives are saying that both of these are big issues right now.

Okay, once again, many thanks almost there are health correspondent.