Delays to cancer diagnosis and treatment during the pandemic could cause up to 35,000 excess deaths within the next 12 months, research has suggested.

Up to two million routine breast, bowel and cervical cancer screenings may have been missed throughout the crisis, while urgent referrals and operations have been delayed or cancelled.

A study by DATA-CAN, the Health Care Research Hub (HDR UK) for Cancer, examined data from eight hospital trusts and shared the results with BBC Panorama.

The researchers warned that a worst-case scenario could see 35,000 more people dying of cancer by this time next year.

DATA-CAN’s scientific lead Professor Mark Lawler told the programme: ‘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.’

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NHS England’s national clinical director for cancer Peter Johnson said the organisation was striving to restore cancer services back to normal levels as quickly as possible.

He told Panorama: ‘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%.

‘I’m hoping that we will get back to where we need to be by the end of the year.’

It follows another dire warning from a former chief scientific adviser, who yesterday said a further 27,000 excess deaths are ‘likely’ between now and next April if the Government continues with the same approach to coronavirus.

Speaking on Sky News, Sir David King said it looked as though the current Government policy was to ‘maintain’ the current level of about 3,000 new infections per day across England.

He said: ‘What we are saying is 27,000 excess deaths are likely between now and next April if the expectation by the chief medical officer is that he would be surprised and delighted if the UK is in the same place next spring.

‘If he’s correct we would still have about 2,000 to 3,000 new infections in England per day and that is the number of deaths that would follow from that.’

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