Some local cancer patients are being transferred to other hospitals to ensure they receive timely treatment during the pandemic.

Leicester's hospitals - which serve a million residents across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland- are still providing urgent and emergency care but a health boss today admitted that there are "capacity issues impacting p2 patients".

Priority 2 patients are those needing elective surgery or treatment within four weeks to save their life or stop the progression of their condition. They are not all cancer patients.

Medical director for University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Andrew Furlong, said: "We do have issues with capacity at the moment, particularly for what we call our p2 patients and so what we do if there are capacity constraints, is do a referral for cancer patients to the Midlands cancer hub or for our non-cancer patients to regional networks.

"This is to make sure that our patients are not being disadvantaged if there is a local problem within Leicester's hospitals, but it is fair to say that the problems that we are facing, other trusts are too. There is a national problem with capacity."

UHL's three city hospitals, Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester General Hospital and Glenfield Hospital, are currently treating 500 Covid-positive patients – the highest number at any time of the pandemic. The figure equates to more than 1 in 3 beds being used for Covid-related care.

While pressure remains high, one eye is now on the recovery, with health bosses working out ways to clear the backlog of patients caused by Covid.

Pre-pandemic, there were no patients who had waited more than a year for treatment or surgery, that figure now stands at more than 6,000. Not all of the 6,000 are cancer patients but health bosses said cancer patients will take priority once pressure on local hospitals eases.

Acting chief executive, Rebecca Brown, said: "We continue to see the pressure in ITU so whilst the numbers in the hospital are beginning to come down and we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, particularly with the lockdown, that has really helped with this.

"But we will still see growth in our ITU and ECMO numbers probably for the next couple of weeks.

"It's important that we recognise that because that is the key bit that will help us with restoration and recovery when we want to get back to doing our cancer cases."

She added: "After the first wave we ended up with a backlog of cancer cases and we worked tirelessly in our restoration and recovery phase and were able to actually get to a better than pre-Covid position and we want to be doing the same thing here.

"This group of patients and any others where we have to postpone operations, we really do monitor and support."

Mr Furlong explained that clinical reviews of patients waiting for treatment are carried out regularly to ensure there is no harm as a result of delays.

He said: "We continue to have clinically-led reviews of all of our patients and they are all attached a priority score based on their condition and the urgency of their cases, we also undertake an assessment of potential harm by any delay, we run a twice-weekly theatre prioritisation group which considers the number of patients who are most urgent.

"Theatre capacity is flexed to address those areas where there is the greatest need – that includes the way we use the independent sector.

"There are ongoing discussions through region networks about how we develop our recovery plan as a region and locally to come out of this wave and to restore services as quickly as possible for those people whose surgeries are being delayed."

Experience gained post wave one will help get services back up and running and ensure backlogs are cleared as quickly as possible, health bosses said.

"We made good progress following wave one and there is a lot of learning from that we can use as we develop recovery plans which we are starting to develop now, as both locally and nationally it would appear that we are topping out in terms of demand," Mr Furlong said.

He went on: "But we also know that we will continue to face these pressures for a number of weeks yet, and the reason for that is that there is a lag phase between what you see as your community numbers, that plays out into hospital admissions, which then plays out into intensive care admissions.

"There is a week or so between community numbers to hospital numbers and then a week or so between hospital numbers and ITU numbers and then ITU patients will often spend a couple of weeks or so on intensive care units so all of that has to play out as we start to top out.

"That means pressures for the next two-three weeks at least."