One Million Cancer Cases “Missed” During Covid Lockdowns
Nearly a quarter of all new cancer cases – one million globally – may have been missed during the Covid pandemic, a World Health Organisation study has found. The Telegraph has more.
Researchers said lockdown restrictions and pressures on healthcare systems saw diagnoses of the disease drop by 23% globally, suggesting it was not identified in around one million people.
The findings come after experts analysed the results of more than 240 different studies, providing the first comprehensive worldwide assessment of the impact of Covid on cancer care.
The researchers found there had been a 23% drop in the number of cancer diagnoses made after spring 2020, a 39% decline in cancer screening, a 24% drop in diagnostic procedures and a 28% reduction in treatments.
In 2022, approximately 20 million cancer cases were newly diagnosed and 9.7 million people died from the disease worldwide.
Writing in the journal Nature Cancer, the study’s authors said: “Applying this to the estimated number of new cancers diagnosed in 2020, and assuming that the impact was largest during the first three months of the pandemic, about one million cancer cases might have been missed during the pandemic.
“Many factors might have contributed to this finding, including reduced access to health centres because of lockdowns and suspension of non-urgent care at hospitals, patients’ and healthcare workers’ fear of contracting COVID-19 and equipment or medicine shortages due to supply chain disruptions.”
The WHO public health scientists said that although the impact on cancer care from the pandemic was now starting to become clearer, the full toll would not be known for several years. They warned that any subsequent spike in cancer death rates would take longer to show up in data than falls in screening rates and missed cases.
“Disruptions in pathways to diagnosis and treatment could have an impact on survival and ultimately cancer mortality; as such, the full impact of cancer stage shifts (with later cancer diagnoses during the pandemic) may only become evident in future years,” they said.
A previous study by the University of Oxford found there had been a “substantial impact” on cancer screening and diagnoses in the U.K. in 2020 and 2021 caused by the pandemic. It estimated that 18,000 breast, 13,000 colorectal, 10,000 lung, and 21,000 prostate cancer diagnoses were missed from March 2020 to December 2021.
Something doesn’t add up here. If 62,000 cases of just four cancers in the U.K. were missed, there must have been far more than a million globally, as it’s not plausible that the U.K. (with 0.85% of the world population) would have 6.2% of the missing cancer diagnoses (and in just four cancers). Maybe that’s why the University of Warwick’s Prof. Lawrence Young says it’s “likely to be an underestimate”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Children who were born during lockdown and started school in 2024 are unable to respond to their own names, a new report from four charities – Save the Children, Child Poverty Action Group, the Children’s Rights Alliance for England and the Centre for Young Lives – has found after polling more than 350 reception teachers.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Unfortunate side effects of emergency measures. Or not, as the case may be. Take your pick. There is also the prospect that certain “safe and effective” products end up along the lines of “the cure is worse than the disease” for some.
A trusted statistician – if one exists – needs to analyse these figures extremely carefully. It sounds as if they’re trying to find alternative explanations to excuse a cancer time bomb that they fear is about to become apparent. I share your concern.
This will be interesting. There may be an increase in deaths diagnosed as cancer. But will there be an increase in all-cause mortality? This may help answer questions on whether screening is useful. It’s also ideal as arse-covering for a spike in cancer mortality which is not at all related to the new vaccine technology (/sarc). This is not much comfort to anyone who feels their cancer diagnosis has been delayed.
It may be that ‘our’ NHS will pour more resources into catching up on cancer diagnosis, treatment and care. That will mean taking resources away from somewhere else. Unfortunately, I don’t think the resources spent on rainbow paint-jobs will be cut.
Who could have predicted this? Oh, hold on…
I think “ignored” would be a better description than “missed”
How ironic – the WHO, that advocated grotesque societal restrictions for a respiratory virus with age-fatality profile paralleling general mortality, five years later sponsors research on the inherent downside of reduced cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Specialist subject the b. obvious. And that’s leaving aside PCR-tested positivitis, “died with” and “died of” and Dr Dennis Rancourt’s well-argued and intriguing transmissionless bacterial infection hypothesis:
“Medical Hypothesis: Respiratory Epidemics and Pandemics Without Viral Transmission”
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202412.0480/v1
“My contribution is to advance that the likelihood of fatal transmissionless pneumonias in the elderly and persons with comorbidities increases significantly with environmental changes or assaults that cause biological stress, and to describe several mechanisms. My hypothesis is that this proposed phenomenon is amply sufficient to cause epidemics, pandemics and seasonal mortality, always targeting the frail and sick, and that Covid was exactly such a case, completely caused by institutions and governments.”
“Nearly a quarter of all new cancer cases – one million globally – may have been missed during the Covid pandemic, a World Health Organisation study has found.”
The WHO was at the helm throughout and made no mention of this terrible blunder. At the same time all the useful childhood vaccine programmes were either severely disrupted or stopped putting back the gains made with reducing childhood mortality with (mostly) tried and tested vaccines.
Here is the ‘brilliant’ director of the WHO from 4 years ago, and he’s still the director, which must mean he’s really good?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO6hbweXv8A
Coronavirus: WHO chief says “too many countries headed in wrong direction”
The Ethiopian Marxist Terrorist, you mean? The one who was responsible for massive deaths in his own country, before being mysteriously chosen by the Globalists as the best person in the world to direct the World Health Organization? Perhaps it should be renamed the “World Death Organization”.
Quite.
The excellent photo above shows the real truth, especially about childhood cancer victims.
The vast majority of them are Ethnic Europeans = White People, especially children, “diagnosed” with sudden strange cancers and other extremely rare diseases with very long names designed to dazzle you with science.
People, and parents, please remember this:
There is a vast difference between being “DIAGNOSED” with a disease,
and actually HAVING IT.
The perils of “early diagnostic markers” prompting the perils of treatment for a disease that might not manifest untreated.
Can’t help wondering about early diagnosis of a high profile “case” that’s made the headlines over the last year.
And how many people got cancer through the untested vax?
At this time of year it is good to eat chaga mushroom. It has major protective effects in winter and raises energy levels. In WW1 they noticed that patients stayed healthier in birch groves and the chaga mushroom feeds off the birch and it very antiseptic. There have been studies showing that it can inhibit tumour growth.
There must be thousands still to be diagnosed as the ability to get one’s foot in the door of a GP is still unbelievably difficult. As GPs are the portal to initial assessment and further urgent investigations, perhaps like my OH who now has only months to live, their cancer symptoms may not always be textbook typical. I still believe the true extent of the ‘Jab damage’ is being hidden from us plebs.