A hospital in Bradford, West Yorkshire, is struggling with overcrowding in its paediatric A&E (Picture: Getty)

A hospital has asked families to only send one parent with a child to A&E to stop overcrowding.

Bradford Teaching Hospital’s Paediatric Emergency Department said it has seen a sudden surge in admissions of young children suffering from winter infections.

Usually medics account for between 70 and 110 children coming to the West Yorkshire unit a day, but this number has increased to 150 recently.

Many more parents are bringing their kids to A&E because they’re worried about Strep A – the illness which has killed at least 16 children.

Deputy director of Operations in Unplanned Care, Shaun Milburn, said: ‘We are also seeing more children presenting with respiratory infections than we have had in previous years because of the relaxing of lockdown rules.’

Children are generally suffering from minor breathing conditions such as respiratory syncytial virus, bronchiolitis, paraflu or rhinovirus.

Mr Milburn added: ‘We are appealing for families to follow to our one child, one parent rule as recently we have seen multiple members of families attending with a child, meaning that there has been significant overcrowding.’

Bradford Teaching Hospital’s Paediatric Emergency Department is seeing around 150 patients a day (Picture: Google Maps)

The new policy will be implemented immediately but exceptions will be made for children with significant disabilities.

Dr Elizabeth Jones said: ‘Over the weekend we have seen significant overcrowding in the department, particularly the waiting area, which poses a real risk to safety.

‘If a parent or carer is worried about their child’s health please don’t hesitate to bring them to our unit, but please can only one adult or carer attend per child as this will help to keep the unit safe and keep waiting times down.’

A top health chief has warned it is ‘going to be tough winter’ with more infections returning the way Strep A has.

Professor Sir Stephen Powis said the UK should prepare for a difficult few months with the return of the flu and other viruses.

The national medical director for NHS England stressed that this is ‘the first winter in a few years that we will have seen flu again’.

On top of all of this, the NHS also has to deal with the backlog from Covid, he added.

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Exceptions will be made for children with significant disabilities.