One in Six Cancer Diagnoses Missing During Covid, Study Finds

About 55,000 cancer cases went undiagnosed across seven high-income countries during the first nine months of the Covid-19 pandemic, underscoring the extent to which lockdowns and health-system disruptions affected routine medical care, a study found.

An estimated 16% of expected cancer diagnoses across Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and the UK were missing between April and December 2020, compared with pre-pandemic trends. The largest declines were seen in prostate cancer diagnoses, which fell 24% below expected levels, followed by female breast cancer and melanoma, both down 18%. Lung and ovarian cancers were less affected, said researchers from the ...