The number of patients waiting to start NHS treatment in England at the end of June reached a record 5.5 million according to latest figures – but this is expected to keep climbing for at least a year.
Of those patients waiting, 68.8% were waiting up to 18 weeks (16.1 percentage points higher than June 2020) and 304,803 had been waiting more than 52 weeks.
More than 1.6 million patients were added to treatment waiting lists in June while 1.3 million started treatment pathways.
And it appears case numbers are building up sharply without reaching the typical pre-Covid flow.
According to the data, the number of referrals for treatment in June 2021 was 90.5% of the level in June 2019 as a pre-Covid baseline comparison.
Using the same comparison, the number of completed admitted and non-admitted treatments was 84.5% and 88.2% respectively of the pre-Covid level.
The continuing surge in numbers highlights the backlog that built up while the NHS was coping with the Covid-19 pandemic and while patients stayed away from addressing non-urgent treatment.
The figures come just days after the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) predicted waiting lists could surge past 14 million within a year.
It noted that from the start of the pandemic until May 2021 around 7.4 million fewer people joined NHS waiting lists than would have been expected.