The number of patients waiting more than a year for routine treatment at Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust has rocketed to a record high thanks to coronavirus cancellations, new figures reveal.

NHS statistics show 277 patients had been on the waiting list for 52 weeks or more for elective operations or treatment at Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust at the end of August.

This was the highest figure for the month since comparable local records began in 2011 – the previous August, just three patients had been delayed as long.

According to NHS rules, patients referred for non-urgent consultant-led elective care should start treatment within 18 weeks.

A spokesperson for RCHT said: "Like all hospitals, we suspended routine operations at the start of the pandemic to prepare our hospitals and make sure we were ready to care for the anticipated numbers of people with coronavirus. At that time, we had worked hard to reduce waiting times and had no-one waiting over 12 months for routine surgery.

“Whilst surgery for cancer and some other urgent conditions continued throughout the first wave of the pandemic, it is only in the last couple of months that we have begun to get routine operations re-scheduled. In doing this, our clinicians are regularly and carefully reviewing all patients waiting over 12 months, so that we can call people in based on their clinical urgency.

"We have also written to them all and set up a hotline for anyone who feels their condition has become significantly worse.

“How quickly we can get back on track and bring down waiting times will depend on what happens during the second wave of the pandemic over the coming weeks and months.

"That’s where local people can really help us by sticking to social distancing measures, self-isolating if, and when, they are required to, and doing everything they can to keep the number of cases as low as possible.”

It is a problem facing hospitals all over the country, with the King's Fund think tank saying there was a “mountain to climb” to tackle delays caused by Covid-19.

It is after NHS data showed more than 100,000 people across England had been waiting at least a year for non-urgent care – the most for more than a decade.

The same statistics show 27 patients on the waiting list for elective operations or treatment at Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust at the end of August had been waiting longer than the 18 weeks.

That was four per cent of those on the list, up from two per cent the previous August. But this means the trust still meet the NHS target that no more than eight per cent of patients are left waiting beyond the 18-week maximum target.