More people had to wait longer for treatment in A&E departments across Kent in December after it was revealed ambulance crews dealt with the highest ever number of life-threatening calls.

Today, new figures have shown that ambulances in the south east responded to 5,077 category one calls in December 2021, which was higher than the previous two months.

So as a result, coupled with the number of NHS staff absent due to Covid, in Kent, 15,423 patients out of the 64,887 who went to an A&E department, were there for more than four hours which works out just over 23% of patients waited longer.

Across the Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust 2,870 patients (23%), of the 12,669 that attended the emergency departments waited more than four hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged.

At hospitals under the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, 5,816 (58%) of the 10,018 people who attended the accident and emergency department were there for more than four hours.

Out of the 11,139 patients in A&E at the Maidstone And Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust hospitals, 3,004 (27%) spent more than four hours there.

At the Medway NHS Foundation Trust, 3,718 (30%) of the 12,244 A&E patients were there for more than four hours.

But bucking the trend, the Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, saw only 15 (less than 1%) of the 4,489 people who attended it's emergency department were there for more than four hours.

Across the UK more than 66,000 staff were off work each day in December and weekly data, also published today, shows that around 46,000 NHS staff were off sick each day last week due to Covid.

This was up from 12,000 per day at the start of December before Omicron began to spread rapidly in the community.

While the rapid deployment of boosters in the final fortnight of 2021 helped to limit potential admissions from the new variant, more than 32,000 patients were admitted to hospitals in England with Covid-19 in December alone.

In 2021, hospitals cared for over 302,000 Covid admissions, while helping people with six million emergency health problems.

NHS staff continue to prioritise cancer care with the latest data showing that more people than ever before came forward for a cancer check with 246,316 people seen in November following a referral by their GP and almost 28,000 people starting treatment.

NHS National medical director, Professor Stephen Powis, said: “Omicron has increased the number of people in hospital with covid at the same time as drastically reducing the number of staff who are able to work.

"Despite this, once again, NHS staff pulled out all the stops to keep services going for patients.

"There have been record numbers of life-threatening ambulance call outs, we have vaccinated thousands of people each day and that is on top of delivering routine care and continuing to recover the backlog.

"But staff aren’t machines and with the number of Covid absences almost doubling over the last fortnight and frontline NHS colleagues determined to get back to providing even more routine treatments, it is vital that the public plays their part to help the NHS by getting your booster vaccine, if you haven’t already.

"And as has been the case throughout the pandemic, if you have a health problem, please go to 111 online and call 999 when it is a life-threatening condition – the NHS is here for you.”

All hospital trusts mentioned in this article were contacted for comments.