A “deadly time bomb for cancer” as the disease killed more people than expected since the pandemic

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Dr Amar Ahmed, GP at Wilmslow Health Clinic, said: “It is very clear that Britain is in the midst of a growing cancer emergency.

“Just as there was a concerted national effort to tackle the Covid pandemic, we need a similar national campaign to tackle the worsening state of cancer diagnosis and treatment in the UK.

“Freeing frontline doctors from unnecessary NHS bureaucracy will go some way to improving the NHS’ ability to tackle this emergency.”

Since the start of May, there have been far more excess deaths in England and Wales from causes other than Covid.

Nearly 30,000 more people than would normally be expected have died in the past eight months, compared to about 8,800 from Covid.

Extensive collateral damage

A separate report from the World Health Organization (WHO) showed that excess deaths globally during the first two years of the pandemic were nearly three times higher than from Covid-19, leading to fears that the crisis has caused significant collateral damage.

The World Health Organization found that there were 14.83 million excess deaths worldwide in 2020 and 2021, compared to the 5.42 million deaths reported.

Although much of the discrepancy can be attributed to a lack of testing, which means no Covid deaths have been reported, the authors warn that the pandemic has also caused “widespread collateral damage that has led to the loss of lives and livelihoods”.

The WHO team said countries had seen disruptions to basic health services, and said it hoped to discover the causes in future work.

The research has been published in the journal Nature.

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