A&E departments throughout Greater Manchester are ‘extremely busy’, health bosses have warned, as services struggle to keep pace with demand while junior doctors stage a six-day strike.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, at 1pm today (January 3), the NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership warned that local A&E departments were ‘extremely busy’, and warned anyone with emergencies that are not life-threatening to ‘expect a significant wait’.

The health body added: “Local residents can help by remembering that hospital A&E departments/999 should only be used for life-threatening illnesses & injuries.

“For conditions which are less urgent, please use NHS 111 instead.”

According to an update shared by Greater Manchester Police, some hospital trusts have declared ‘Opel 4’ – the highest level of NHS alert, meaning the service is so under pressure that patient safety could be compromised.

NHS Greater Manchester has been contacted to clarify which trusts are affected.

In Bolton, residents have been warned of wait times of up to 11 hours for A&E.

The development comes a day after Greater Manchester health bosses warned of ‘significant disruption to services’, with junior doctors set to strike from 7am today until 7am on Tuesday, January 9 – the longest single strike in NHS history.

On Tuesday, Dilraj Sandher, commenting on behalf of NHS acute medical directors in Greater Manchester, said: “It is important that members of the public do not hesitate to come forward to access care if they need it. NHS 111 online should be their first port of call if they need urgent health advice on days of strike action.

“If you are unwell and need to contact your GP practice, it will be open but will very likely be busier than usual. You should also make sure to order your repeat prescriptions as soon as possible, if they are due.”

Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC Radio this morning, NHS Confederation director of policy Dr Layla McCay said the NHS was ‘skating on thin ice’.

She said: “Plans have been put in place and people have been working very, very hard on these rotas. But the rotas are just about covered, so it only takes a consultant or two to go off sick – which, of course, there’s a lot of Covid and flu, norovirus, other winter viruses around at the moment and a couple may go off sick – then that is going to put the entire plan in jeopardy, which is why the leaders across the NHS are so concerned that this is skating on thin ice.”

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Previously, Health and Social Care Secretary Victoria Atkins said: “January is typically the busiest time of the year for the NHS and these strikes will have a serious impact on patients across the country.

“I urge the BMA Junior Doctors Committee to call off their strikes and come back to the negotiating table so we can find a fair and reasonable solution to end the strikes once and for all.”

In a statement issued earlier today, BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said: “Doctors would have liked to start the new year with the hope of an offer on pay that would lead to a better-staffed health service and a better-valued profession.

“Instead, doctors are still set to be paid £15.50 an hour and are being forced to go back out on strike by a Government that cannot get its act together and make the reasonable offer on pay it knows it eventually must. 

“We spent the holiday period hoping we would get the ‘final offer’ that the Health Secretary had promised us last year. Sadly, we have received no such offer despite repeatedly saying we would meet for talks any time over Christmas.

“We will continue to offer to meet throughout these coming strikes. All we need is a credible offer we can put to members, and we can call off these strikes.”

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The BMA said junior doctors’ pay has been cut by more than a quarter since 2008.

Last summer, the Government gave junior doctors in England an average rise of 8.8 per cent, but medics said the increase was not enough and ramped up strike efforts.

Late last year the Government and junior doctors entered talks, but after five weeks of negotiations the negotiations broke down and more strikes were called.

If you have a story, I cover the whole borough of Oldham. Please get in touch at jack.fifield@newsquest.co.uk or click to send me a message on WhatsApp or on Signal on 07517566383.