By Staff, Agencies

An investigation by the British “The Independent” daily has revealed an alarming escalation of the NHS crisis in all areas of the health service as new figures released on Thursday showed 54,532 patients waited 12 hours for an A&E admission in December, a monthly rise of 44.1 per cent.

As ambulance waits reached an average of 90 minutes for strokes and heart attacks, one patient described a Cardiff A&E as “mayhem” with no free spaces, people lying on the floor with oxygen tanks and queuing in hallways.

Dr Simon Walsh, of doctors’ union the British Medical Association, said the health service was “in unprecedented territory, where harm is actually occurring week after week”. He added: “The situation now is far worse than I’ve ever experienced. We’ve never really thought that any government would let it get as bad as it is now.

Last month 2.2 million patients sought help at A&E, but only half of them were seen within the target of four hours. Earlier this week, we revealed the number waiting more than 12 hours had exceeded 50,000 for the first time.

The Commons health select committee announced it would investigate the link between excess deaths and long A&E waits.

Ambulance delays were also the worst on record, as the average response for the most urgent incidents, such as cardiac arrest, dropped to 10 minutes and 57 seconds – almost four minutes higher than the target. For category two emergencies, such as strokes, they took an average of an hour and a half to respond, compared with a target of 18 minutes.