UPDATE: A 'black alert at hospitals in Cornwall is expected to stay in place through the weekend, with patients warned off attending A&E in Truro due pressure on services.

Royal Cornwall Hospital has asked patients to stay away as it cannot cope with the volume of people being admitted, with operations cancellled, some staff leave cancelled and patients kept on trolleys for hours.

A spokeswoman for the Royal Cornwall Hospital Emergency Department in Truro said it was issuing the alert after increased pressure.

"We are advising people to stay away," she said.

"We have had pressures on the system for a while."

She suggested the cold weather and the start of the half-term holidays could be reasons for the increase in attendees.

Patients are advised to call 111 or visit their doctor or pharmacist unless they are in a serious or life-threatening condition.

A spokesman said: "Royal Cornwall Hospitals are extremely busy right now with difficulties admitting and discharging patients.

"To ensure that we can continue to provide high quality and safe care, the health and social care partners in Cornwall have declared a significant incident to respond to pressure on services.

"To help doctors and nurses focus on the sickest patients please only use the Emergency Department in Truro if you are in urgent need of care and attention.

St Ives MP Andrew George, a member of the House of Commons Health Select Committee, said: "We cannot carry on like this. The further west you go, the more precarious the situation.

"There is no other A&E service that those in the far west can go to. When emergency services like this are closed, blue-light ambulances cannot take patients to the north, west or south. There is only a very long and potentially life-threatening journey to the east if the front doors at Treliske are shut.

"Years of cutting hospital beds, the revolving door of perpetually-changing executive chiefs of the trust and the burden of the massive legacy debt caused by underfunding have left our only acute trust in this position.

"With too few hospital beds and not enough nurses on the wards, what we see happening today will happen again and again unless someone gets a grip."

The call to stay away comes as A&E departments up and down the country are facing increased pressure this winter, with a number of other units also asking people to avoid them.

The number of A&E attendances in England peaked to 440,000 before Christmas.

There were 407,400 attendances in the week ending February 8, which is the most recent for which NHS statistics are available.

It was the 19th week in succession that the goal of seeing 95% of patients within four hours was missed.