That's the highest since last April.

The London area is at the center.

Off the crisis, as we speak on Did Our medical editor, Fergus Walsh, has been allowed to film inside the intensive care unit at London's University College Hospital.

It is one of the city's busiest Thea extended report film by Adam Walker, on produced by Nolt.

Leverage will shock and upset many viewers.

Yeah, intensive care is under pressure like never before.

After Christmas.

It just sort of get me.

I've seen a couple of people within a short time that I spent in the hospital.

I think Mike here from a relentless rise in covert admissions.

How long can you keep going through this pace?

I think we've got about a week staff fear burnout.

I'm here.

Okay, The nurse is a broken physical and mental load is huge.

The toll is immense, but my emotions are all over the place.

Scared, sad, petrified, worried.

This should be on operating theater but there's no surgery here.

Instead, it's being converted into an intensive care unit.

The number of covert patients in London's hospitals has doubled in just two weeks.

They're more stretch now than at the peak last April.

We've got three times as many critically ill patients in this hospital than we normally have, and we've managed to stretch and spread to cover that.

But that can't go on forever.

Intensive care is expanding across University College Hospital, a Children's area now for desperately sick adults.

Every day more wards are being transformed into icy.

You ready for the next influx, But senior staff are worried.

Got plans that we can expand for another week at this rate.

But after that, we really need to see it slow down or we're gonna see on the care waken deliver suffer.

I think we'd be running so thin on staff that we wouldn't just physically couldn't look after critically ill patients.

1234 context.

It would be ideal if we have one water.

The ventilated patients are turned twice a day.

Lying on their front prone helps get oxygen to their lungs.

Nine staff are involved in this delicate procedure Yeah.

I think we're gonna go all over on 3123 So to ensure breathing tubes, Drug lines.

Aled, the paraphernalia of critical care are not disturbed.

Thank you.

Co vid has made this a winter like no other.

Attila is 67 over the holidays.

Corona virus spread through his family after Christmas.

It just sort of hit me.

He just sort of went bank.

I just couldn't breathe a tall I didn't think I'll actually make it through your gasping.

It's like, you know, uh, there is no oxygen around, do you?

Frightening.

Sorry.

Frightening.

Very, very frightening.

Very.

There are three pregnant women in intensive care.

Rachel is due in five weeks.

Every mother put that child before.

Hard.

Still, both she and her baby are doing well.

They can't do anything that will harm the baby, obviously.

And they look after my baby so well, all the time.

Coming and check in Monitoring.

The baby is happy.

You can't see that you're looking after two people.

Mhm.

It wants to save your life.

It was actually one of the demands on staff are unrelenting on on their families to Alice.

Has young Children cared for by grand parents in Scotland during the first peak in stage one E sent my five and seven year old daughters away because we weren't quite sure how how we would manage.

And so I have my four year old in tears last night, the thoughts of another lock down because she saw that meant I was sending her away again.

She's most worried about the impact on nurses, the bedrock of care in I c.

U.

It's not uncommon at the moment that I I've come to work.

I've walked some SI unit to find nurses crying.

The physical and mental load is huge on.

I'm really worried that we're gonna break a lot of nurses.

What about the doctors and doctors on doctors to intensive care?

Nursing is highly specialized, usually there one toe, one with patients now responsible for 34 or five, with other staff filling the gaps.

We're so stressed we have to prioritize and prioritizing.

Care is not what the NHS that I grew up in, We shouldn't have to choose which patient gets what care first, Ashley says she's never had to make decisions like this before.

If people asking for your help.

You just don't know who to help.

First.

The patients are losing their lives, a dramatic speed.

We're not just getting old people.

This is young people that were getting people my age.

I've reported from here several times during the pandemic, and I'm always struck by the professionalism and dedication of staff.

But this is a system under strain, like never before.

Warning scientific couldn't be clearer.

The NHS is now on the brink.

Unless infection rates start to fall soon, then it could seriously impact patient care.

And not just for those with co vid.

These are really serious consequences.

And if we get to that point, we can't offer anyone.

I t you not just covert patients.

But you know, anyone who has a traffic accident or a heart attack or a stroke or whatever it is, we just won't have any more capacity to take to take them in.

For now, the trust is coping.

Cancer operations are continuing, though most non urgent surgery is canceled.

All of a sudden, I had a blue, you know, just kind of it.

Just like knocked on the door.

There you go.

Hello, Judge.

Yeah, I was just pleased that I was still alive.

Now Gerald is awaiting chemotherapy for lung cancer and had bean shielding, but still caught coronavirus.

Alright, Love you.

Lots.

All right.

Love you.

Love you.

He just wants to get home to his daughters when you've got young ones behind.

Yeah, she'll worry.

Yeah, because you fight for your life is for them.

Yeah.

You want to give them a life?

What?

The next few weeks could be the biggest challenge the NHS has faced in its history.

And it will be its staff who will bear the brunt for all of us.

And Fergus is with me.

It's a rare glimpse off that that you shared with viewers, folks, not for the first time.

But I think it's fair to say that this was even more intense and even more harrowing than the last visit you made.

Absolutely.

It's worse.

You put simply the staff there are used to dealing with the crisis.

But they are exhausted.

Shell shocked.

I saw some in tears.

Now this is a UK wide crisis.

We now have 30,000 plus co vid patients in hospital across the UK.

At the peak in April, it was 21,000 of the average age of those patients in intensive care ISS 60.

But many are in their twenties, thirties or forties.

The images in that report that they are sobering, frightening even.

But the NHS is urging people who are seriously ill with non co vid conditions to come forward notes.

So if you think you're having a heart attack or a stroke, or if you have a lump or a bump which may be cancerous, do seek medical help because last time people didn't and that cost lives.

But we are tonight, I think, in a more perilous situation that at any time in this pandemic, especially because of the new contagious variant.

But the key message from staff is that we all have a role to play in this pandemic and stay at home if you can.

Fergus.

Many thanks once again for that.