Where and what is the NHS medium term plan for covid?

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The short term plan seems to be to deal with it day by day. Ok, fair enough.

The government mantra all along has been "protect the NHS".
So what is the government plan to deal with covid patients, and just as importantly, non covid patients, going forward?

It has had nearly 1 year of covid so far. It admits that covid is not going away.

It is all very well the population trying to help the NHS. But what is the government itself planning to do? And why havent we heard anything yet? I appreciate they will be wondering exactly how the vaccination programme will pan out, but doing everything merely on a day to day basis only, is not how a government organisation, or any government, should conduct itself.

I am a floating voter, so no axe to grind with the government per se, but it is unfair to ask citizens to continually protect the NHS, when the government itself is not laying out what it also intends to do to protect it.

You can't really have a discussion on this without getting political and recognising that the Tory party invests as little as possible and deliberately underfunds public services, including the NHS.

The plans they'd like to implement, they can't get away with. There were many senior consultants in the media yesterday expressing concerns because the Conservatives just eant more privatisation for the NHS. Because their actions are fueled by pure cronyism, they tend to not set out their plans in too much detail.

A fair enough answer. Thank you.
Can you expand on what you mean by your last sentence please?

There are trials for treatments for COVID–19 that are intended to be used in the early days after diagnosis. The treatments should be:
easy to administer in the community (at home);
effective at preventing any disease severity;
successful at reducing any need for hospitalisation.

If the treatments are successful, there will be substantially less pressure on G&A (General and Acute) beds as well as less demand for HDU and ITU beds and this will create the space and resources to resume non-COVID–19 work.

UK clinical trials about treatments for early or mild Covid. In general, if anybody >65 yrs-old or who is >50 yrs-old with a pre-existing condition develops Covid, it might be good to think about self-enrolling in the Oxford Principle Trial. Principle is expanding its suite of low-cost treatments for Covid that people can do at home to treat early or mild Covid and it's intended to reduce the number of those who need admission to hospital:

www.principletrial.org/

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-23/trial-for-wonder-drug-that-may-reduce-covid-deaths-times-says

There's increased activity into rapid reviews of therapeutics for preventing or treating COVID–19 infection both within NICE and NIHR.

The Oxford Principle trial is about to expand the range of treatments available for treating mild COVID–19 in the community (age 65 and older or 50 and older if there's a pre-existing condition) and reduce the need for hospitalisation (or the 'ripening' into a severe case). Patients can self-enrol for that now without needing their GP practice to have registered.

www.principletrial.org/

Thank you @EmbarrassingAdmissions
I cant say I understand all of your post, and I have a feeling that there will be other posts on this thread that I will not fully understand either.

Are you saying and thinking, that with vaccinations, that the NHS will be able to cope with both covid and non covid patients, going forward?

I'm also very curious about this. It's been a year and this is clearly a long-term problem. A great deal of money, much wasted, has been thrown at this problem. Whole now empty hospitals have been built. I can't help but wonder if investing in expanding NHS staff and infrastructure just runs too counter to the move to dismantle and privatise healthcare, even now.

For examples, nursing shortages could be greatly boosted by restoring cut bursaries for training. Stressful as it is - I'll bet there are plenty of people who would rise to the demand if there was some financial support - as there is for teacher-training in hard to get subjects.

Agree - if NHS is the crucial issue - what's the plan?

Are you saying and thinking, that with vaccinations, that the NHS will be able to cope with both covid and non covid patients, going forward?

Yes. That's it.

The greatest issues will no longer be the number of staff who've been redeployed to meet the COVID–19 surges nor the pressure on bed spaces.

There will, however, be:
substantial waiting lists;
staff shortages (PTSD, work-related stress, long COVID);
shortage of enough facilities to cope with the backlog and current work load;
a need for a regular vaccination service on a very large-scale for the next few years (probably) - and this will absorb both staff and money.