Nearly 700 more women in England could die from breast cancer as a result of the pandemic, a study shows.
Delays to screening caused by lockdown restrictions mean hundreds more are likely to lose their lives.
Researchers warned many cancers that would have been picked up during routine checks will have progressed while women were made to wait. And further hold-ups due to clearing the screening backlog will add to the problem.
Nearly 1.5 million women in the UK had routine mammograms delayed by up to seven months between July 2020 and July 2021.
Researchers from the Department of Health and Social Care, the UK Health Security Agency and Queen Mary University of London calculated this will mean thousands of extra cases of breast cancer that probably would have been detected during screening, instead only being diagnosed once women have developed symptoms and the tumour is more advanced.
Nearly 1.5 million women in the UK had routine mammograms delayed by up to seven months between July 2020 and July 2021
Leading cancer charities last night called for more details on how the Government plans to tackle staff shortages that are affecting services.
Baroness Morgan, chief executive of Breast Cancer Now, said the findings were ‘utterly devastating’. She added: ‘This research highlights the tragic consequences of the disruption caused by Covid-19 for breast cancer.
‘It’s now a matter of life and death that the government addresses this backlog as an immediate priority. It needs to urgently boost the cancer workforce.’
Dr Jodie Moffat, head of early diagnosis at Cancer Research UK, said: ‘Breast screening services are back up and running, which is great.
‘But getting through the backlog is challenging because of a lack of NHS capacity.
‘We need clarity about how the extra money promised to the NHS is going to be used to tackle these chronic workforce shortages.’
Last September, the Government pledged an extra £5.4billion over six months to help the NHS cope with pandemic backlogs.
More than two million women in the UK undergo annual breast cancer screening and the checks are credited with saving 1,300 lives each year. But within months of the pandemic beginning in March 2020, the NHS was forced to put most routine breast X-rays on hold.
The latest study, published online in the British Journal of Cancer, is one of the first to calculate precisely what impact the delays are likely to have on the breast cancer death toll.
Researchers looked at the number of women affected by screening suspension and for how long and estimated the proportion of cancers that would have been missed due to checks being put off. They estimated 2,783 cancers in England would shift from screen-detected to symptomatic disease, as a result of the programme disruption.
An optimistic scenario, they said, where the backlog is cleared quickly, could mean just 148 additional breast cancer deaths. A more pessimistic outlook puts the extra death toll at 687.
Researchers warned: ‘It’s likely the true numbers are closer to the upper end of the range. There will be delays in diagnosis which may have a substantial negative impact on women’s breast cancer survival for the next ten years.’
It wasn’t luck but good judgment that’s let us cast of Covid curbs
By Professor Karol Sikora
Britain now faces what might be the most difficult moment of the pandemic. The question is not if it is too soon to lift Covid restrictions but whether we have already left it too late to counter all the catastrophic effects of successive lockdowns.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is absolutely right to declare an end to scaremongering and pointless precautions.
Now the Government has to stand firm against the inevitable protests from those who prefer life under lockdown, in particular the medical scientists with a vested interest in perpetuating the fear.
They are pointing to other countries such as Australia and New Zealand where draconian restrictions are still in force. We have to maintain the courage of our convictions.
Time will prove us right, just as it has when we look back at the dictatorial stance taken by some European countries at the height of Covid. In Portugal, for instance, people were offered 100 euro bribes to inform on their neighbours if they suspected lockdown breaches.
We were able, most of the time, to hang on to our sense of proportion and so we achieved a rather British sort of polite lockdown, not police lockdown.
Our success in casting off restrictions raised the question this weekend of whether we arrived here by luck or good judgment. In my view it is the latter – the refusal of the Government to take heed of doom-laden predictions from scientists about Omicron proved the right path.
Make no mistake, though: Shutting down the hospitality sector and ordering people to work from home were far less significant in defeating the virus than our outstanding vaccination programme. It is the triumphant success of the vaccines, implemented with an efficiency that was seen in few other countries worldwide, that puts us in such a strong position to lead the way and reopen for business.
My chief regret is that the scaremongering was so heavy-handed. In Sweden, which sensibly held back from repeated lockdowns, fewer people were so frightened that they stopped seeking medical treatment for other conditions.
As a result, while attendance at Swedish accident and emergency departments fell by 31 per cent, in the UK the decrease was almost double that, at 57 per cent.
As an oncology specialist, I am gravely worried by the steep reduction in cancer diagnoses during the past two years. Latest studies suggest there are an estimated 84,000 people in Britain who have cancer and don’t know it, because they haven’t reported their symptoms.
Some will be staying away from GPs and hospitals, reasoning wrongly that they are safer at home. Others might have tried to book appointments and failed, because the healthcare system is so clogged up.
Waiting lists for all treatments are now longer than at any time in the history of the NHS. Official figures suggest 6million people are in the queue, or about one in nine adults. I fear the real figure is even higher, and could be as many as 10million, because so many people are afraid to report even the most serious symptoms – such as signs of a heart attack.
Because of this, we could be entering the most lethal phase of the pandemic, despite the fact that the virus itself is waning. Two years of fear are beginning to impose a terrible toll. The best way to save lives now is to break free from all restrictions and spread the news that Covid is largely over –thanks in great part to that stupendous success of the vaccine programme.
In February 2021, about one infection in 100 proved fatal. A year later, that figure is 20 times lower, at one in 2,000. There are fewer than 400 people intubated in intensive care, and 91 per cent of the most vulnerable cohort, the over-60s, have been triple jabbed with the vaccine.
Despite this, many scientists are calling for a continuation of Covid restrictions, stoking the furnace of fear that has raged for two years.
It’s plain to see how frightened many people still are, because of the number still wearing masks in the street and in cars.
The Government needs instead to focus on repairing the damage. The Institute for Fiscal Studies states that pupils in Britain face losing an average of £40,000 in earnings over their lifetimes – a total of £350billion.
Those losses, I suspect, will hit the youngest and oldest worst, the ones who were just learning to read and the ones who were due to sit exams. But they will also be unfairly spread across social classes. Children from wealthier homes, who had access to good internet and calm environments for study, will have fared much better than poorer ones in overcrowded, noisy conditions.
We all lived through the same storm, but some of us were in spacious, comfortable boats with plenty of provisions and others were in cramped, little rowing boats.
Now that we’re getting back on to dry land, any further restrictions would be an unforgivable betrayal of those children.
There’s a tough future facing all of us. We have to get on with it, and ignore the siren voices holding us back.
Karol Sikora is a consultant oncologist and professor of medicine at the University of Buckingham Medical School