Stark new figures have revealed the unrelenting pressures the region's hospitals faced over the winter - and continue to battle now.

As the Omicron variant pushed NHS services to their limits over the Christmas and New Year period - and beyond - Norfolk and Waveney saw lengthier stays for patients, longer waiting times for ambulances and hospitals forced to cram extra beds in to cope with demands.

The winter period also saw the entire NHS service in Norfolk and Waveney forced to declare a critical incident as it struggled to cope with the demands for its care.

Now, the figures behind these struggles can be reported, with a record number of patients spending more than one, two and three weeks in hospital among the headline figures.

While other winters have seen a greater number of people pass through the doors of the three acute hospitals, more patients than ever were kept in hospital for lengthy stays.

By the end of February there were 909 patients who had been in hospital longer than a week - 456 in the Norfolk and Norwich, 227 in the James Paget and 226 in the Queen Elizabeth.

The previous record was 775 in the winter of 2019/20.

Records were also set for patients spending more than two weeks in hospital - 538 in total - while 334 patients had to spend three weeks or more being treated.

Many of these cases will have been caused by delayed discharges - or bed blocking - which occurs when patients are medically fit to leave hospital but do not have social care plans in place to allow them to leave.

At one point, on February 5, there were 384 of these patients across the three hospitals at once.

This also has a knock-on effect for emergency departments and ambulances, as it prevents new patients being admitted into beds.

As a result, almost a third of the region's ambulance - 6,532 out of 20,290 - were able to successfully drop off their patients in less than 30 minutes. This was despite 2,000 fewer ambulances being required than in the previous winter.

There were also unprecedented numbers of patients in intensive care over this period. At its peak, on February 2, there were 90 patients in critical care beds across the three sites.

No sign of letting up

Experts say 'winter pressures' on hospitals are a thing of the past, as the level of demand no longer appears to relent outside of the colder months.

In the past month, demands for NHS services have shown no sign of letting up, with hospital and ambulance trusts both stretched significantly.

In March, the number of A&E attendees were at their second highest on record, with 33,461 patients attending the three hospitals across the month.

And of these patients, 986 had to wait more than 12 hours before a bed could be found for them.

This included record highs for all three hospitals, with 362 at the James Paget, 351 at the Norfolk and Norwich and 273 at the Queen Elizabeth.

The previous record high month for this figure was 692 - and in the first three months of 2022, this has happened on 2,296 occasions.

In the five years between January 2016 and December 2020 this happened just 341 times.