Answer our prayers on Covid curbs, Boris

IN an increasingly secular country, it often feels as if the NHS is fast becoming our national religion.

The object of pious and ritualistic displays of worship (exhibit A: the weekly doorstep clap), even muted criticism is considered blasphemy. Yet despite paying taxes to fund this bloated leviathan, many members of the congregation have been abandoned during the pandemic.

Instructed by ministers to ‘Stay Home, Protect The NHS, Save Lives’, the public complied not just with the spirit of the mantra, but to its precise letter.

Reluctant to be a burden or frightened of catching Covid, millions avoided hospitals and GP surgeries. But this has had grave consequences. There is now a silent epidemic of unseen misery.

Today, more hard evidence. We reveal that in the battle against the virus, up to 50,000 dementia cases went undiagnosed last year. Without having their condition identified, sufferers and their families have taken the first steps into the darkness of this cruel disease without support or care.

Many patients will end up in hospital as a result – piling further pressure on to the listing health service.

At the same time, the Government’s decision to effectively turn the NHS into a Covid-only fortress sparked a plunge in admissions for the most serious ailments, including cancer and heart disease.

By scrapping consultations, treatment and operations for an all-consuming focus on the pandemic, ministers and health chiefs have tragically consigned some patients to an early grave. Others are forced to languish in a world of constant pain and disability.

Meanwhile, those marooned in agony on waiting lists – a shocking 5.3million and counting – are resorting to taking out huge loans to pay for private surgery. These snapshots starkly illustrate the devastating collateral harm of lockdown?

True, the Prime Minister has pledged to tackle the enormous backlog. But his spectacularly inept ‘pingdemic’ handling, which saw healthy doctors and nurses selfisolate, has already undermined efforts.

And what happens if one-eyed scientists get their way and – irrespective of the vaccine miracle – we are placed back in the deep freeze if Covid infections rocket?

In that miserable scenario, more patients with abnormal lumps or chest pains will delay seeking urgent help, while the queue for the operating table would surely grow.

There is, of course, an excellent reason why Boris Johnson must avoid this nightmare at all costs.

Why, too, he must axe the indefensible isolation rules, which are closing down large chunks of the UK just as No 10 attempts to open them up.

It is crucial to get our economic engines roaring, not least because financial and public health are so closely entwined.

Put bluntly, we can’t buttress the NHS on debt for ever. At some point, Britain’s firms must start making money because we need the tax revenues to fund it.

For all of us, not just those who hail the health service as a religion, it is vital Mr Johnson answers this prayer.