Coronavirus could cause 3,500 avoidable cancer deaths

Researchers have suggested that there could be more than 3,500 avoidable cancer deaths in England in the next five years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Writing in The Lancet Oncology journal, the team analysed the likely impact on four major types of cancer - breast, colorectal, oesophageal and lung - given how the health service has experienced disrupted services and how some people had avoided healthcare.

During lockdown, some cancer services were scaled back or delayed, although people were still encouraged to have any essential or urgent care. With some areas of working returning to normal, screening programmes to detect early signs of bowel, breast and cervical cancer in people with no symptoms are now trying to catch up with a backlog of appointments.

Early diagnosis and treatment can save lives and anyone who suspects they may have cancer should seek help. However, research at the start of June warned that approximately 2.4 million people in the UK were waiting for cancer screening, treatment or tests, as a result of disruption to the NHS.

The researchers stress the figures are a prediction of what might happen, rather than what will. The model assumes that disruptions due to the pandemic will affect access to routine and urgent cancer diagnostic services and alter health-seeking behaviour for a 12-month period.

Dr Ajay Aggarwal from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who led the research, said: “Our findings demonstrate the impact of the national Covid-19 response, which may cut short the lives of thousands of people with cancer in England over the next five years. Whilst currently attention is being focused on diagnostic pathways where cancer is suspected, the issue is that a significant number of cancers are diagnosed in patients awaiting investigation for symptoms not considered related to be cancer. Therefore we need a whole system approach to avoid the predicted excess deaths.”

Further research also suggests that ongoing delays in diagnosis and treatment of two months could lead to a substantial proportion of patients with early-stage tumours progressing from having curable to incurable disease.