Year after year, the NHS faces a deluge of “winter pressures”, as seasonal illnesses are passed around and beds fill up. 

But with the ongoing pandemic and a huge backlog already adding pressure, will the NHS cope this year? And what are the government’s plans to get us through it?

Today, our Health and Social Care editor Victoria Macdonald talks us through the government’s plan this winter, and asks whether the Covid Plan A, which focuses on vaccines and boosters, will be enough to stop us from resorting to Covid Plan B, and the more extreme measures that dominated our lives for most of the past 18 months and ruined Christmas last year.