Incidents have been declared at hospitals in our area amid cases of flu.

NHS leaders at several local hospitals including Gloucestershire, Cheltenham and Bristol declared a critical incident due to a combination of factors, including high levels of flu and norovirus, as well as high levels of need.

Meanwhile, Great Western Hospital (GWH) was operating under a business continuity incident.

This comes as hundreds of people are being treated for flu.

At GWH last week, around 100 beds at the hospital were also currently occupied by patients who are ready to leave but have not yet been able to do so, while 400 people attended the hospital’s emergency care services in one day earlier this week.

A spokesperson for Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “Great Western Hospital, like the wider NHS, is currently facing very high demand from patients arriving at our urgent and emergency care service.

“Our teams are working tirelessly to treat patients as quickly as we can and working with social care colleagues to get people home as soon as they can so that we can free up more beds.

“However, 17 per cent of patients - amounting to about 100 individuals - are currently occupying beds that are ready for discharge.

"This reflects the broader challenges our systems face in ensuring patients are moved at the right time.

“On Monday, we saw around 400 attendances to our urgent and emergency care services.

“Typically, we see around 300 attendances per day.”

The trust spokesperson added: “We have also seen a rise in patients with flu in recent days, and we are currently treating 39 patients with flu.

“People are urged to take extra care and ensure their home medicine box is appropriately stocked.

“For many people, flu-like symptoms such as headaches, fevers and sore throats can be easily managed at home through a combination of resting, staying hydrated and safely making use of common medicine box items, such as paracetamol and ibuprofen.

“Local people can also help us by only coming to hospital if they really need to and using the NHS 111 service online in the first instance, which can direct people to the most appropriate healthcare setting - which may not be hospital.”

Nationally, the number of people in hospital with flu in England is continuing to increase and is nearly five times the level it was at the start of December, NHS figures show.

The average number of flu patients in hospitals in England each day last week was 5,408.

This is much higher than at this point last winter when the average was just 1,548.