Almost 7.1 million patients in England were waiting to start their hospital treatment in September, up from 7 million in August, the latest National Health Service (NHS) statistics show.
Waiting times at the Accident and Emergency Department (A&E) also hit a new record high, with 594,389 people waiting for longer than four hours before being admitted, transferred, or discharged in October.
It comes as nurses in a majority of NHS hospitals are set to strike over pay disputes before the end of the year.
By the end of September, 7.07 million people referred for hospital treatment were on waiting lists, the highest number since the record began in 2007, and 60 percent higher than the number in February 2020 (4.4 million)….