THE shocking case of an elderly man left unable to swallow after waiting 52 hours in A&E has raised fresh concerns over the state of NHS urgent care.

The 85-year-old was sent to a hospital emergency department after a routine appointment, but died four weeks after spending most of the delay on a bed in the corridor.

A report from the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) said the Parkinson’s sufferer’s condition deteriorated as he was not given the regular medication he needed.

Investigators found there were “no defined roles or responsibilities in the emergency department to ensure patients who required time-critical medications were identified, and medications prescribed, as soon as possible.”

Health leaders warned today that hospitals are “busier than ever” as new figures revealed the number of people in hospital with flu has more than quadrupled compared with last year.

The NHS is now facing a “quad-demic” of disease going into winter amid rising cases of flu, Covid-19, norovirus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

NHS national medical director Professor Sir Stephen Powis said ambulances are facing huge demand with flu and norovirus numbers in hospital rising sharply.

“For a while there have been warnings of a ‘tripledemic’ of Covid, flu and RSV this winter, but with rising cases of norovirus this could fast become a ‘quad-demic’,” he said.

The Royal College of Nursing warned there is a “barely a spare bed in the NHS.”

The total number of NHS hospital beds has fallen by more than half since the late 1980s, from 299,000 in 1987-88 to just 141,000 by 2019-2020.

NHS Providers, a membership organisation which takes part in negotiations between trusts and the Department of Health, called for a “healthy dose of realism” after the government vowed that 92 per cent of patients will be seen within 18 weeks for pre-planned care by July 2029.