An intensive care doctor has said people who do not follow social distancing rules or wear masks "have blood on their hands".
Professor Hugh Montgomery, who works at London's Whittington Hospital and leads a research group at UCL was interviewed by BBC Radio 5 Live, where he said hospitals were facing a "tsunami" of Covid cases.
He added he feared the situation would get worse after New Year's Eve.
He urged people to not gather in groups for New Year's and to accept that it was going to be a "miserable" occasion this year.
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He said: "We are in a lot of trouble in UK intensive care now. Just huge numbers coming in, my heart goes out as well as our emergency departments, seeing a tsunami in the last week or two of cases. Everyone is working at maximum stretch."
Professor Montgomery told Radio 5's Rachel Burden it was wrong to blame the surge in cases and deaths on the new coronavirus variant, which was only "slightly" more transmissible and caused the same symptoms.
"It is making me actually very angry now that people are laying the blame on the virus, and it is not the virus, it is people, people are not washing their hands, they are not wearing their masks," he added.
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He also issued a warning for those not social distancing or following the government's guidelines.
"They are spreading this virus. Other people will spread it and people will die. They won't know they have killed people but they have."
He added: "I am watching whole families getting wiped out here, and it's got to stop."
On Wednesday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced the new areas heading into tighter new restrictions in a bid to curb the rapid spread of Covid-19 across the country.
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A number of areas have now been put into Tier 4, which sees millions more people facing the harshest measures ahead of the New Year.
The latest data has shown that 90 per cent of local areas in England saw a hike of infection rates in the run-up to Christmas.
Tougher restrictions come as the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine has been approved for use in the UK.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has authorised the vaccine for use, meaning it is both safe and effective to be rolled out to the public.
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