The United States is currently facing a cancer timebomb as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has caused hundreds of thousands of patients to miss out on diagnosis and treatment.
A recent analysis revealed that the rates of new cancer patients in 2020 decreased by approximately 15% compared to 2019, resulting in approximately 125,000 fewer diagnoses. However, the actual number of missed cancers could be even higher, possibly in the hundreds of thousands.
This study, published in Lancet Oncology, is the most comprehensive research on the impact of the pandemic on cancer diagnoses in the US to date. Researchers collected data from the 2020 national registry to identify 2.4 million adults newly diagnosed with cancer between 2018 and 2020.
The decline in diagnoses was most significant among stage 1 cancers, increasing the risk of cancer spreading and making treatment more challenging.
It is important to note that access to healthcare was disproportionately affected for individuals who historically face barriers, such as Hispanic, Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, uninsured individuals, and those living in socioeconomically deprived areas.
The Covid-19 pandemic had a significant impact on healthcare systems, leading to reduced access to routine care, screenings, and diagnostic tests. Lockdowns and social distancing measures implemented to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 had unintended consequences in other areas of society.
The above graph illustrates the sharp decline in new cancer diagnoses since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
President Joe Biden recently claimed to have cured cancer, but it is important to note that the cancer death rate has only decreased by 1.5% per year since 2020, which makes it unlikely to achieve the goal of reducing the cancer death rate by half in the next 25 years.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also attribute the decline in new cancer cases to the pandemic, citing disruptions in health services, delays in screenings and diagnosis, and reporting issues to central cancer registries.
The above graph depicts the cancer diagnosis rates (top lines) and fatality rates (bottom lines) for males (red) and females (blue) since the beginning of the century. It shows a downward trend in fatality rates while case rates remain steady.
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