While Queen Elizabeth's funeral on Monday will be observed across Britain, thousands of people face cancelled doctor appointments, closed food banks and shut supermarkets because of a surprise national holiday.

Iran PressEurope: New Prime Minister Liz Truss - appointed by the queen on Tuesday, just two days before she died - wasted no time to set out one of Britain's biggest ever economic packages on Thursday, just as news emerged of the queen's deteriorating health.

But since then a period of national mourning has been declared that will run until the funeral, with parliamentary business suspended for 13 days and the Bank of England delaying a critical interest rate decision by a week.

Many patients have been left frustrated after being told that National Health Service (NHS) appointments they had waited months to secure were suddenly cancelled.

Britain's state-run NHS is already facing its worst ever staffing crisis and has more than 6 million people on waiting lists for hospital treatment. It handles an average 888,000 general practice appointments each day, according to Reuters calculations from data from the last six months.

There are also concerns about the NHS resources needed to rebook appointments and doctors having to make childcare arrangements at short notice.

Across London, corporate and diplomatic meetings were cancelled while some major stores and theme parks shut as organisations struggled to find the right response to the death of a monarch for the first time in Britain for 70 years.

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