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This episode follows the Royal Free London NHS Hospital Foundation Trust as it faces the long-lasting effects of Covid on both patients and their services, amidst the looming threat of a second wave. As people couldn’t and/or didn’t access health care during the pandemic, the cancer services are now inundated with new referrals and patients facing increasing waits for surgery.

It is mid-summer, and the trust has a target of getting all services back to 90 per cent of their pre-Covid activity and all within strict new infection control guidelines. The NHS has mounting backlogs, and departments across the trust are battling for scarce theatre slots while trying to prioritise their volume of cases.

They are doing everything they can to treat as many patients as possible safely, but when at any moment staff can be sent home to isolate because of a suspected Covid diagnosis or contact, the immensity of the challenge is clear. At Barnet Hospital, a large team meeting is underway when a clinician is informed he has tested positive for coronavirus. He must leave the site immediately, while the hospital's infection control team spring into action to identify who has had ‘significant contact’ with him and must therefore also go home and isolate for 14 days. Any positive result has the power to take out swathes of staff and have a huge impact on the hospital and its patients.