Britain | Unwinding the National Covid Service

Why the NHS will not be back to normal for a very long time

Numbers of covid patients are falling. Yet the health service faces an enormous backlog

OVER THE past few months, the thousands of organisations that make up the National Health Service, and the 1.7m people they employ, have turned their attention to one task: dealing with the pandemic. The astonishing transformation that resulted saved many people’s lives, and the health service from collapse. Now, however, it must be undone. Medics everywhere are working out how to return to something like normality, even as the virus circulates. Many hospital chiefs believe doing so will prove even more difficult than the initial transformation.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Now for the recovery”

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