just to respond to that point briefly, nagpaul?t to be honest, because we expanded capacity. and re—purposed the nhs to deal with the surge in covid patients at the expense of many other. patients who were not able to be seen. - that is why we have this backlog of several million patients. - it is not about semantics with the word crisis, - its about honesty. we are not going to be able to deal with this backlog. in a short space of time. many experts think it would take lyears, ijust want to be honest. | iand i think it's really importanti also to recognise that we are not awash with beds and doctors. we already have far fewer hospital beds in places i like germany and france. about a third as many and we havei very few doctors relatively speaking compared to european nations. so there is a challenge, - it's not about creating alarm, but by being honest, _ one can actually try and make sure that those patients in greatest need are treated first. - but also, there's an enormousl potential and what is important really is to use tech

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let's speak now to dr chaand nagpaul, chairman of the british medical association. relaxing of restrictions be postponed?— of the relaxing of restrictions be --ostoned? ~ , postponed? the prime minister said from the outset _ postponed? the prime minister said from the outset we _ postponed? the prime minister said from the outset we needed - postponed? the prime minister said from the outset we needed to - postponed? the prime minister said from the outset we needed to be . from the outset we needed to be guided by data and not dates, and while we have come a long way and it's fantastic to the vaccination programme be so successful, at this moment in time, we do need to be concerned about a certificate increase in numbers of new cases. today, we have actually now seen about a 45% increase in number of deaths in the last seven days and also a 23% increase across hospitalisations. the data at the moment is not looking promising and that's because of course of the new variant. and when you look at the conditions for coming out, the road map conditions, one of those cr