The incident was declared on Tuesday 3 December due to extremely high patient number across all our issue of the hospital.

In an update on Thursday 5 December North Bristol NHS Trust said: ‘The actions taken by our teams and the response of the public over the past two days means that the hospital is now in an improved position.

‘We still expect this weekend to be very busy and are planning accordingly and ask that you please consider using alternative services, such as your local pharmacy or NHS 111 where appropriate.

‘We are incredibly grateful to our staff for their efforts and for the understanding of patients during this particularly busy time.'

NHS England reported there were 96,587 patients in hospital beds for the latest week ending 1 December, a record for this time of year.

The latest weekly update raised fears of a ‘quad-demic' with flu cases up by 350% and norovirus cases up 86% year-on-year, combined with rising Covid and RSV levels.