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Coronavirus could lead to 35,000 extra cancer deaths - double previous estimates

A nurse on a ward at a hospital - PA
A nurse on a ward at a hospital - PA

Britain’s Covid crisis could lead to an extra 35,000 cancer deaths a year, research shows.

Medics have raised concerns that the numbers dying could soar,  because of late diagnosis and delayed access to life-saving treatment during the pandemic.

Previously charities have forecast that the death toll could rise by 18,000.

But the new UK data modelling suggests a worst case scenario could be almost twice that.

The research by DATA-CAN, the Health Data Research Hub for Cancer, comes as medics criticised the NHS handling of the crisis, saying too much treatment was stopped during the lockdown.

The research, revealed by BBC’s Panorama, comes alongside figures showing that even by the end of May, urgent cancer referrals were still down by almost 45 per cent.

Professor Mark Lawler, Professor of Digital Health at Queen's University Belfast, scientific lead of DATA-CAN, said: “Initial data that we got was very worrying to us. Anecdotally, people have been telling us there were problems, but I think the critical thing was being able to actually have routine data from hospital trusts.

“We felt that, in the worst case scenario, there would be 35,000 excess [cancer] deaths in the United Kingdom [in the next year]. Obviously scientists like to be right in terms of their analysis, but I hope I’m wrong in relation to that.”

Professor Pat Price, a clinical oncologist, said too much treatment was delayed, on the basis of NHS guidelines, in a “very high risk strategy”.

She said:  “The guidelines for radiotherapy and Covid-19 advised people to delay and avoid radiotherapy in some circumstances. I think the guidelines were suggesting that we should be not giving [radiotherapy] all the time, at that time, which was in retrospect, not the best advice. I think it was a very high risk strategy.”

As a result, radiotherapy machines were left lying idle, when they could have saved lives, she said.

“We are looking at a huge number of unavoidable deaths and we need to address it because there are patients we can cure and we want to get on with it, but we haven’t been allowed to do it. And this is all too little, too late. We’ve got to get on with it, we need to save lives.”

Peter Johnson, National Clinical Director for Cancer NHS England said: “What we were concerned to do when the virus was increasing very rapidly in the population, was to make sure that we could get the right balance between the risk of catching the virus, and the risk of having people’s cancer get worse.

“And in particular, the risks and benefits of things like chemotherapy where, if the chemotherapy isn’t absolutely crucial but it might be dangerous in terms of increasing your risk of coronavirus [...] this wasn’t a kind of attempt to police who should have treatment and who shouldn’t,  it was more an attempt to try and help people think very clearly.”

He said it was “impossible to say” whether Covid-19 would result in excess deaths, but said he hoped the NHS would be “back to where we need to be by the end of the year”.

“We’re working as fast as we can to put the services back together again, to restore the capacity and indeed to build more, so that we can deal with the people that have not been diagnosed during the time when the services have been running below 100 per cent.”

Medics said many patients who should have seen their doctors over possible symptoms of cancer did not want to add to pressures on the health service, while others were terrified of catching covid.  During the peak of the crisis, urgent referrals fell by 60 per cent.