The number of covert deaths recorded in the past 24 hours in the UK was more than 1800.

That's yet another record since the pandemic began, but more than 4.5 million people across the UK have now received their first dose off vaccine.

The pressure on the NHS is still extreme.

On our latest report on hospital staff this week is from the Royal Darby Hospital.

Are medical editor Fergus Walsh.

Producer Nicky Stastny on camera Journalist Rob Taylor compiled this report.

I've been a nursing for 33 years, and I have never seen anything like this.

In all honesty, it is physically and emotionally exhausted.

I don't think anybody feels that we've seen the worst of this year, but we carry on on.

This trajectory will be completely overwhelmed in a couple weeks.

Theo Warnings keep coming on.

Not just from London.

This is the Royal Darby Hospital.

Nearly half its patients have coverted for a couple of hours.

Paul Robinson is 50.

He's terrified.

Horrendous night and I won't lie.

I messaged my wife this morning to say that I wasn't so sure if I was going to survive.

We just bought ourselves a new, beautiful bongo, which was supposedly moving into, and it's our dream and I may not see it.

The intensive care unit has doubled in size, and it's still growing, but they've already had to transfer some critically ill patients to other hospitals.

This time it's been a perfect storm, really off the new variants arrived.

We've hit winter.

It just the wrong time.

Christmas has arrived at exactly the worst time it could have done.

There's just been a steady, inexorable rise of cases.

We are still on the ramp of the patients coming through shut the length on the remaining lines.

Caring for those patients places huge demands on staff.

123 go.

Every I see you uses this procedure prone ing, turning patients on their front to help their breathing.

This is the very definition off intensive care all over the country.

There are medical teams like this one, trying to keep thousands off co vid patients alive, all that on coping with other winter pressures as well.

There is light amid the darkness.

Treatments are getting better.

Steroids and some arthritis drugs have greatly improved the chances of survival, but to provide care.

You need staff.

So many are off sick.

Those left are drained.

On one shift, nurses had to walk past co vid deniers demonstrating outside the hospital.

We've got staff who absolutely exhausted and traumatized a lot of stuff of struggling with the mental health, nurses, air coming in and working extremely hard.

A lot of them are doing extra shifts.

They're all exhausted and then to see protested, saying it's not riel for the nurses and to come in.

Those on the co vid frontline say if the public could see through their eyes, they take more care.

It's not a hoax, it's very riel.

People are dying daily within the hospital, and I myself have held the hand of patients are dying within the department.

I think people need to take it a little bit more seriously, and I don't think they're aware of the impact.

The emergency department has separate entrances for co vid and non co vid patients.

Like scores of other hospitals across the UK, they're approaching their limits.

If we reach a point where the hospital is so full that we can't get patients out of the emergency department in a timely fashion, the whole system down here comes to a halt, and that's when we start holding patients on ambulances.

That's where we start to see the real risks of patient harm creeping up in the emergency department.

There is a path out of the pandemic via the vaccine, but the benefits won't be felt here for many weeks.

For now, hospitals are bracing for worse to come.

Fergus Walsh, b b c News Darby We talked to Ferguson in just a moment before that.

Let's have a look at the latest official government figures, which are revealed today showing that there were 38,905 new infections recorded in the latest 24 hour period, which means that on average, the number of new cases reported per day in the past week is 42,026.

And as you can see on the chart there that's been falling across the UK, an average of 39,000 and 68 people were in hospital with coronavirus over the seven days to Sunday that includes suspected cases in Wales, 1820 deaths were reported.

That's people who died within 28 days of a positive co vid test As we've heard, that's the biggest single total reported so far.

On average in the past week, 1218 deaths were announced every day.

The total number of deaths so far across the UK is 93,000 200.

On day 90 let's get a quick update on the program of mass vaccinations.

343,163 people have had their first dose of one of the three approved vaccines in the latest 24 hour period.

That's the most yet in in a day, and it takes the overall number of people who've had their first vaccine too.

4,609,000, 740.

So, as promised focuses with me, are our medical editor in your report their focus where you talk Thio staff those involved you then said, braced for worse to come.

What, What did you mean by that?

And what can viewers understand by that?

Well, the appalling record death toll today, Hugh surpassing another record yesterday, each one someone being mourned tonight by family and friends.

The UK has the highest Kobe death toll in Europe.

The fifth highest in the world.

And it underlies yet again that with this new, more transmissible variant, we are in a more precarious on more fragile position in terms of controlling the virus than at any time in the pandemic.

Many of those who have recently died will have bean affected around Christmas time.

But it wasn't until the end of December and early January that we saw that huge surge in cases on that is only just beginning to feed in to the daily death toll.

At some point in the next week or two, we should mercifully passed the peak.

But the numbers, dying and in hospital are going to remain very significant throughout winter.

The one solace is that the protective effect of vaccinating the most vulnerable will, before long begin having a positive impact.

Fergus.

Many times.