NHS Lanarkshir e Heather Knox described a dire situation with people visiting accident and emergency units on the rise leaving staff unable to cope.
As a result of the increased pressures on services the health board may need to "pull back on some of our elective care services".A gold command meeting is expected to take place today where solutions will be identified in order to keep the situation under control as much as possible.
NHS Lanarkshire is the second health board to declare it is under pressure due to the rising number of covid cases. Yesterday, NHS Highland announced that Raigmore Hospital in Inverness is now full to capacity and that non-urgent operations were being cancelled as a result.