4 December, 2025
An early flu surge is starting to add to pressure on Emergency Departments in England, leaving frontline staff fighting an uphill battle to provide urgent care.
That’s the message from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) as new data from NHS England is published today (4 December) in the first of this year’s weekly winter ‘situation reports’.
The data revealed that 56% more flu patients occupied general and acute hospital beds last week than the same period last year.
The figures, which cover the period from 24 November to 30 November 2025, showed:
- 1,649 type-1 general and acute beds in England were occupied by flu patients per day, compared to 1,060 last year
- Seasonal illnesses mean that there are hundreds more beds closed compared to last year
- Small improvements were seen in speeding up ambulance handovers
- However, the number of patients who are fit to leave hospital but unable to be discharged has increased year on year, from 11,969 in the same week in 2024 to 13,232
- The daily bed occupancy on wards stood at 94.2%, only improving slightly from 94.8% last year
- Staff absences remain stubbornly high, at 51,924, an increase of 257 compared to the same week period in 2024
Dr Ian Higginson, RCEM President, said: “An early flu surge isn’t something we would choose to see. Our corridors are already full of extremely ill patients with nowhere else to go, because there are no beds available to admit them.
“But I want to be clear: flu and seasonal illnesses are not the sole issue here. Things were already terrible. And winter is predictable. Flu is also predictable, and sometimes it will be a really bad year.
“There’s no point keeping on blaming external forces for deep seated problems, when we conspicuously fail to plan for these events and run our hospitals in a state of permacrisis so there is no reserve left.
“It’s time to acknowledge the political failure that has left us here, and to prioritise tackling hospital flow and delayed discharges. It’s time to invest in the long term solutions, and it’s time to plan to for predictable stressors, rather than being caught by surprise every year.
“Things are about to get pretty bad. The result will be more patients stuck in trolleys for hours and hours. And we know that these long waits are associated with an in increased risk of death.
“Our teams will do our best to minimise the risk, but with one hand tied behind their backs by policy failure, it won’t be easy. It’s going to be a long winter.”