The warning comes as new figures revealed the number of people in hospital with flu have increased by more than half in just one week.

Catch up as it happened: NHS warns of 'worst-case scenario' as 'super flu' surges

Latest figures show:

• An average of 2,660 patients were in hospital per day with flu last week

• This is the highest ever for this time of year and up 55% on last week

• At this point last year the number stood at 1,861 patients, while in 2023 it was just 402

Health service bosses are warning the number of flu patients in hospital has already increased sharply since the week covered by this data - with no peak in sight.

Read more: Why is flu season worse this year?

Virus outbreaks coincide with doctors' strikes

Weekly flu numbers in England peaked at 5,408 patients last winter and reached 5,441 over the winter of 2022/23, the highest level since the pandemic.

Alongside rocketing flu, the number of norovirus patients in hospital has also risen by 35%.

The NHS is now warning winter viruses are starting to "engulf hospitals".

Demand for A&Es and ambulance services is also soaring.

New monthly figures show A&E attendances were a record for November at 2.35 million - more than 30,000 higher than November 2024.

In addition, there were 48,814 more ambulance incidents (802,525) compared with last year (753,711).

Some hospitals across the country have asked staff, patients and visitors to wear face masks to cut the spread of flu, while others have gone in and out of critical incident status due to the high number of people attending A&E.

The record-breaking demand on the NHS coincides with a resident doctors' strike from 17 to 22 December over pay and jobs - sparking fears of major disruption for patients in the run up to Christmas.

People are being advised to attend any planned appointments scheduled during the strikes unless they have been contacted to reschedule.

Flu vaccinations on the up... who can get one?

The NHS is urging anyone eligible to get their flu vaccination to help prevent them getting seriously ill.

Latest figures show more than 17.4 million people have been vaccinated so far this year, more than 381,000 higher than last year.

You can get it if you:

• Are 65 or over in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

• Are pregnant

• Live in a care home

• Are the main carer for an older or disabled person, or receive carer's allowance

• Live with someone who has a weakened immune system

• Are a frontline health and social care worker

• Are of school age

• Have certain medical conditions (the NHS has a full list)

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, warned of a "tidal wave of flu tearing through our hospitals".

"We are working with the NHS to make sure it is able to cope with this as best as possible," he said.

Warning 'extremely challenging few weeks ahead'

Professor Meghana Pandit, NHS national medical director, warned the health service faces "an extremely challenging few weeks ahead" with "staff being pushed to the limit".

She said: "With record demand for A&E and ambulances and an impending resident doctors' strike, this unprecedented wave of super flu is leaving the NHS facing a worst-case scenario for this time of year - with staff being pushed to the limit to keep providing the best possible care for patients.

"The numbers of patients in hospital with flu is extremely high for this time of year. Even worse, it continues to rise and the peak is not in sight yet, so the NHS faces an extremely challenging few weeks ahead."

She added: "We have prepared earlier for winter than ever before, and stress-tested services to ensure people have a range of ways to get the help they need and avoid needing to go to A&E.

"For non-life-threatening care, people should call NHS 111 or use 111 online, which can direct you to the most appropriate place, and use A&E and 999 for life threatening conditions and serious injuries."

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Mr Streeting has offered the British Medical Association (BMA) a last-minute deal in the hope doctors will call off the walkout, which starts next Wednesday.

The doctors' union has agreed to put the offer to members over the coming day, and is expected to announced a decision on Monday, just two days before the planned strike.

The offer includes a fast expansion of specialist training posts as well as covering out-of-pocket expenses such as exam fees, but does not include extra pay.

Changing names, switching flags, and vanishing from tracking systems.

That all came to an end this week, when American coast guard teams descending from helicopters with guns drawn stormed the ship, named Skipper.

A US official said the helicopters that took the teams to the tanker came from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford.

The sanctioned tanker

Over the past two years, Skipper has been tracked to countries under US sanctions including Iran.

TankerTrackers.com, which monitors crude oil shipments, estimates Skipper has transported nearly 13 million barrels of Iranian and Venezuelan oil since 2021.

And in 2022, the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) placed Skipper, then known as Adisa, on its sanctions list.

But that did not stop the ship's activities.

In mid-November 2025, it was pictured at the Jose Oil Export Terminal in Venezuela, where it was loaded with more than one million barrels of crude oil.

It left Jose Oil Export Terminal between 4 and 5 December, according to TankerTrackers.com.

And on 6 or 7 December, Skipper did a ship-to-ship transfer with another tanker in the Caribbean, the Neptune 6.

Ship-to-ship transfers allow sanctioned vessels to obscure where oil shipments have come from.

The transfer with Neptune 6 took place while Skipper's tracking system, known as AIS, was turned off.

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Dimitris Ampatzidis, senior risk and compliance manager at Kpler, told Sky News: "Vessels, when they are trying to hide the origin of the cargo or a port call or any operation that they are taking, they can just switch off the AIS."

Matt Smith, head analyst US at Kpler, said they believe the ship's destination was Cuba.

Around five days after leaving the Venezuelan port, it was seized around 70 miles off the coast.

Moving in the shadows

Skipper has tried to go unnoticed by using a method called 'spoofing'.

This is where a ship transmits a false location to hide its real movements.

"When we're talking about spoofing, we're talking about when the vessel manipulates the AIS data in order to present that she's in a specific region," Mr Ampatzidis explained.

"So you declare false AIS data and everyone else in the region, they are not aware about your real location, they are only aware of the false location that you are transmitted."

When it was intercepted by the US, it was sharing a different location more than 400 miles away from its actual position.

Skipper was manipulating its tracking signals to falsely place itself in Guyanese waters and fraudulently flying the flag of Guyana.

"We have really real concerns about the spoofing events," Mr Ampatzidis told Sky News.

"It's about the safety on the seas. As a shipping industry, we have inserted the AIS data, the AIS technology, this GPS tracking technology, more than a decade back, in order to ensure that vessels and crew on board on these vessels are safe when they're travelling."

Dozens of sanctioned tankers 'operating off Venezuela'

Skipper is not the only sanctioned ship off the coast of Venezuela.

According to analysis by Windward, 30 sanctioned tankers were operating in Venezuelan ports and waters as of 11 December.

The tanker seizure is a highly unusual move from the US government and is part of the Trump administration's increasing pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

In recent months, the largest US military presence in the region in decades has built up, and a series of deadly strikes has been launched on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

In the past, Mr Ampatzidis explained, actions like sanctions have had a limited effect on illegally operating tankers.

But the seizure of Skipper will send a signal to other dark fleet ships.

"From today, they will know that if they are doing spoofing, if they are doing dark activities in closer regions of the US, they will be in the spotlight and they will be the key targets from the US Navy."

The Data X Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

Rob Page, a former lieutenant colonel who has since left the military, is speaking publicly for the first time about his two years spent putting the vehicle through its paces from 2019 to 2021.

In that time, he said he witnessed soldiers on the Armoured Trials and Delivery Unit suffer harm to their hearing because of excessive noise as they operated the platform and harm to their bodies because it vibrated so much when moving.

He flagged his concerns up the chain of command and ultimately recommended that trials be halted in late 2020 and again in 2021 until the noise and vibration problems could be resolved.

Yet, more than five years later, dozens more troops were hurt last month while using the 40-tonne, tracked vehicles - barely a fortnight after Luke Pollard, a defence minister, declared Ajax to be safe and finally ready for operations.

As a result, usage has again been paused as an investigation is carried out.

"It feels a bit like a repetition," Mr Page told Sky News in an interview. "But… soldier safety has to come first, and foremost."

That had been at the forefront of his mind back in 2019 when his troops started to suffer the impact of their bodies being shaken around after the very first trials of the Ajax.

"Essentially, you know, hands, wrists, knees, feet, that type of pain," he said.

"It was concerning, and so we immediately started to raise the fact that this was occurring… We wanted to understand the risk a bit more so that we could make it as safe as possible for them [the troops] to operate the vehicle."

At the time, there had been a lot of pressure on the army and Defence Equipment and Support - the branch of the Ministry of Defence tasked with procuring kit - to bring a fleet of almost 600 Ajax vehicles of different variations into service.

The delivery of the platform - manufactured by the American defence company General Dynamics under a £6.3bn contract - was already running late and costs had grown.

It meant raising the alarm about the safety of the machine was a particularly daunting move, especially as the army is in desperate need of new armoured fighting vehicles after previous attempts to procure such equipment over decades had failed.

Yet over the course of 2020, Mr Page was becoming more worried as soldiers began experiencing ringing in their ears as well as what is known as "whole body vibration".

His team put in place a health check to document how personnel felt before using an Ajax vehicle and then afterwards.

"That gave increasingly more evidence that like, hey, there's a problem here," Mr Page said.

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He also discovered that a separate team of soldiers based at a large factory in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, where the six variants of the Ajax are being assembled, was also becoming sick.

"We started to put this picture together and escalate it up the chain of command quite forthrightly."

A particular concern the former officer raised was about a "noise and vibration calculator" provided by General Dynamics that had been used to set what was meant to be safe speeds to operate the vehicle and a safe length of time to be in it.

He said he requested to see the data on which the calculator had been configured because his soldiers were operating Ajax within the correct limitations but still experiencing noise and vibration symptoms.

'Chernobyl email'

Mr Page said he decided to write what he called a "Chernobyl email" - a reference to the worst nuclear accident in history, when a reactor at a nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl exploded in the 1980s.

"I said, look, we've got a known hazard that we're exposing soldiers to with a set of controls, but I'm not confident the controls are correct," he recalled.

"When the Chernobyl reactor exploded, the decision was taken to put soldiers on the roof to sweep debris back into the reactor.

"And they did that on a three-minute rotation. And so I felt at the time what we were doing was we've got a vibration hazard, we've got a noise hazard.

"We can't quite quantify both, but we know they're there.

"And our solution is to mitigate that with time in the vehicle exposure and speed to hopefully bring the vibration down.

"And for me this felt like it wasn't yet a precise science."

He continued: "That was what I was flagging constantly to my superiors."

The former army officer said he had wanted the noise and vibrations to be properly understood and an "engineering fix" found.

He shared his views with the authors of two major reviews that were conducted into the programme after it was halted.

Mr Page's words are included in two official reports that were subsequently published, but all contributions were made anonymously so he was not publicly identified back then.

The former officer, who spent more than 20 years in the army, said he agreed with the conclusion of the larger of the two reviews that the problems with Ajax were part of a "systemic challenge" within defence procurement rather than the fault of any particular individual.

"Going after this blame game is really not constructive," he said.

"What was important was actually getting hold of the risk and understanding it and making sure that we weren't causing harm and we were putting in the correct controls that meant that we were not capable of causing harm and that's what the focus needed to be."

This included - most crucially - finding and fixing the cause of the noise and vibration, instead of relying on work-arounds such as more cushioning on seats, better ear protection and limiting the time spent on the vehicles.

Dozens of soldiers had hearing examined

Once the trials were stopped in 2021, Mr Page and his team of 30 to 40 soldiers were invited to have their hearing examined by specialists at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.

He said he had suffered pain to his knees and back because of exposure to vibrations while inside Ajax but he had not initially realised that his hearing may also have been affected.

But a specialist talked him through the results of his hearing test.

"She was like: 'Can you track conversations in a loud room?' And I was like 'Well, no, absolutely not'. She was like: 'Do you get tinnitus?' And I was like: 'Yes, definitely'."

He was in his early 40s at the time of the test and now faces the prospect of his hearing rapidly declining.

"I've lost about 20% of my hearing but it's really the tinnitus that's more frustrating… Hearing is a sense. It's one of our core senses and losing it is a permanent disability. And that for me is really the sort of tragedy that's come out of some of this."

What has been the manufacturer's response?

General Dynamics UK said a huge amount of work has done into ensuring the safety of Ajax, calling it "one of the most tested combat vehicles ever produced".

The company said in a statement: "Soldier safety is our highest priority at GDUK. Since 2019, we have worked with the British Army and the Ministry of Defence to conduct extensive testing and trials. We continue, without any hesitation or limitation, to support them.

"Vehicle enhancements and headset changes have been implemented since issues were first identified more than five years ago. Since February 2023, independent assessments confirm noise and vibration levels are within approved legislative limits."

It continued: "The initial reports of noise and vibration concerns from soldiers made over five years ago led to a structured detailed technical investigation conducted jointly by GDUK, DE&S and Army involving noise and vibration experts from, HSE (the Health and Safety Executive), industry, recognised test Establishments and academia… Ajax now holds the most comprehensive safety case of any armoured platform worldwide, covering vibration, acoustics, ergonomics, and crew health. This is the one of the most tested combat vehicles ever produced."

GD concluded: "We have full confidence in the performance and the protection it provides our soldiers. It is the world's most advanced, fully digitised, armoured fighting vehicle."

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: "We will always put the safety of our personnel first and the current pause shows that we will investigate any issues when they arise…We take any allegations very seriously and will look closely at any evidence provided."

In the first reported statement from the school about the accusations - which date from 1970s - current master Robert Milne wrote "such behaviour is wholly incompatible with the values the College holds".

"What we can unequivocally state is that the behaviours described are entirely at odds with the Dulwich College of today," he continued

The comments come in a letter to former Dulwich pupil Jean-Pierre Lihou.

Mr Lihou, 61, has alleged the current Reform UK leader sang antisemitic songs to Jewish schoolmates and "had a big issue with anyone called Patel".

Mr Farage has said he "never directly racially abused anybody" at Dulwich and said there is a "strong political element" to the allegations coming out 49 years later.

Reform's deputy leader Richard Tice has called the ex-classmates "liars".

Nigel Farage said: "I have not met or spoken to this master. So I am surprised by his uninformed comments in response to claims from nearly 50 years ago from politically motivated actors.

"If he is interested, I can show him the many messages that I have received from fellow pupils, including Jewish ones, that entirely contradict these allegations."

A spokesperson for Reform UK said: "This witch hunt is merely an attempt to discredit Reform and Nigel Farage.

"Instead of debating Reform on the substance of our ideas and policies, the left-wing media and deeply unpopular Labour Party are now using 50-year-old smears in a last act of desperation.

"The British public see right through it."

The letter also says the college has avoided making any public statements "to protect the college's reputation in the long term".

"This should not be interpreted as indifference: safeguarding the college's good name and upholding its values are of paramount importance to us," it continues.

Mr Lihou told Sky News he cautiously welcomed the letter written to him from the master and said he understands why the college wasn't willing to unequivocally condemn the allegations against the Reform leader directly.

"Dulwich College has been clear that such accusations are very much at odds with the values of the school," he said.

He added: "Why can Mr Farage not accept that approaching 30 people [who] have lasting memories from him as a 13-year-old to an adult that he should unreservedly apologise for?"

Sky News has contacted Dulwich College for a comment.

Tyler Robinson, 22, from Utah, is charged with aggravated murder in relation to the shooting of Kirk on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem.

Video of the incident showed Kirk, 31, and a staunch ally of Donald Trump, reaching up with his right hand after a gunshot was heard as blood came out from the left side of his neck. He died shortly after.

Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty.

On Wednesday's appearance at Fourth District Court in Provo, Utah, Robinson arrived in court with restraints on his wrists and ankles and wearing a dress shirt, tie and slacks.

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According to the Associated Press, he smiled at family members sitting in the front row of the courtroom, where his mother teared up and wiped her eyes with a tissue.

He made previous court appearances via video or audio feed from jail.

The shooting happened during Kirk's "prove me wrong" series, which saw the father of two visit campuses and debate contentious subjects; in this case, he was discussing mass shootings.

Prosecutors say the bullet which struck Kirk's neck "passed closely to several other individuals", including the person questioning him as part of the event.

A charging document about Robinson from September includes incriminating texts sent between the alleged shooter and his roommate after Kirk's death.

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Judge Tony Graf also heard arguments on Wednesday about whether cameras and media should be allowed in the courtroom, with Robinson's lawyers and the Utah County Sheriff's Office asking for them to be banned.

Mr Kirk's widow, Erika Kirk, has called for full transparency and said "we deserve to have cameras in there".

The judge has already made allowances to protect Robinson's presumption of innocence before a trial, agreeing that the case has drawn "extraordinary" public attention.