Practices have been told they can return to normal and downgrade the COVID booster campaign – in a move interpreted as heralding more face to face appointments.

It came as the latest data showed that last month was the busiest December on record – with practices delivering 20% more appointments than two years previously. These included 3.9 million booster vaccinations, the British Medical Association said. In total practices in England delivered more than 25 million appointments compared with 30 million in November. The decline reflects the Christmas holiday season.

BMA GP committee chair Dr Farah Jameel said practices would struggle to tackle the backlog of work. Dr Jameel said: “GPs and their teams are now also facing an extraordinary backlog of care – not only from patients with currently undiagnosed conditions, but also those currently waiting for hospital treatment who need GP support while they wait. These demands on general practice are simply not sustainable, especially when we consider that there are the equivalent of 1,756 fewer fully qualified full-time GPs in the country compared to 2015. In fact, the average number of patients a single GP looks after today is more than 2,000.

“The fewer GPs we have, the more work they are expected to take on between them. There are no more hours in the day to cram in any more work and no more staff to stretch any thinner. Staff wellbeing is fundamentally important in our efforts to recover, remobilise and support our health service, so that it can deliver high-quality care that is timely, effective and safe for our patients. As well as creating and delivering solutions to bolster the workforce, Government must urgently scrap unnecessary administrative tasks and other unachievable targets if we’re to stand a fighting chance of getting on top of current demand. Without urgent action from Government, the care GPs provide for their patients will inevitably deteriorate as they prioritise only the sickest, ultimately leading to a two-tier system.”

An NHS England circular yesterday thanked practices for their role in the booster campaign and calling for them to “restore routine service.”

Medical director for primary care Dr Nikki Kanani said: “It is now important that all services across the NHS, including in primary care, are able to restore routine services where these were paused in line with the Prime Minister’s request to focus all available resource on the omicron national mission.”