THOUSANDS of people are now waiting for life-saving heart scans in Herefordshire due to disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Echo scans are a type of heart scan used when someone has had a heart attack, or if they have heart failure.

In a new study by the British Heart Foundation before the pandemic in February 2020 on average just one person would be waiting six weeks or more for a heart scan with the NHS in Herefordshire.

By September 2021, the figure had risen to 2791.

As NHS England works hard to recover from the pandemic's disruption to "routine" care, significantly more echo tests are being performed in England now than during the first 2020 lockdown.

But the heart charity warns that widescale disruption and reduced access to these vital tests has created a huge hidden backlog of people with heart disease who have not yet made it onto treatment waiting lists.

Long waits put lives at risk as delaying a heart disease diagnosis increases the likelihood of death or disability, despite decades of research providing lifesaving treatments.

The Government must act now to reduce the backlog of vital echo tests, said a spokesperson from the British Heart Foundation.

Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, Associate Medical Director at the BHF, said: "The long delays we now see for heart imaging tests create a domino effect of disruption to heart care and treatment that ultimately puts lives at risk.

"The backlog of these vital heart tests must be urgently addressed. This could make all the difference in preventing more deaths and disability from treatable heart conditions."