SUE REID: A truly terrible toll for those left to suffer in silence at home 

Patients with cancer, heart problems and other life-threatening ailments are feared to have died at home as the NHS turned its focus to the pandemic.

Alarmingly, delays in cancer surgery alone will cost more lives than the number of virus patients saved in hospitals, predicts Britain’s Institute of Cancer Research, one of the world’s most-respected health bodies.

The wake-up call, in an Institute report, warns a three-month delay in operations on the most common adult cancers risks 5,000 extra deaths. A six-month delay would push those excess fatalities up to 11,000.

The disturbing report follows shocking new figures released by Cancer Research UK that more than two million patients have missed out on vital cancer tests and treatment during the pandemic.

Last week, Macmillan Cancer Support warned that nearly 2,000 cases of cancer are going undiagnosed every week due to the crisis.

The Mail revealed the unfolding tragedy of untreated patients last month. By the end of April, just a few weeks after the NHS switched its attention to Covid-19 sufferers, hospital referrals for cancer treatment in England had dropped by nearly 70 per cent.

Under 100 organ transplants were carried out in April, the lowest for 36 years, according to NHS figures. On a day in April, only six of its 24 liver transplant centres were open.

Professor Peter Friend, director of the Oxford Transplant Centre, says that liver, kidney, and heart patients were already dying on lengthy waiting lists before the pandemic. ‘The effect of doing fewer transplants means that this mortality rate must increase,’ he has warned.

Cardiac specialists have reported a 60 per cent decline in hospital admissions for heart attacks, a condition which the NHS says requires ‘immediate’ treatment in casualty.

Meanwhile, a death certificate count by the Office for National Statistics shows almost 13,000 more people than expected have died in England and Wales since mid-March from causes other than coronavirus.

Statisticians at Oxford and Cambridge are now calling for a national inquiry into the extra deaths amid fears that a lack of medical care is responsible.

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, chairman of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, explained: ‘There’s a huge spike in non-Covid deaths at home very quickly into the epidemic.

‘It’s important to know how many might have been at least delayed if the normal (NHS) healthcare system had existed.’ Visits to England’s accident and emergency departments have halved since the outbreak, tumbling to the lowest since records began.

It means people displaying the early signs of serious diseases have stayed away in their thousands. A nurse and Mail reader has sent us reports with photos showing how many people were at four main casualty departments on a recent Monday afternoon.

The waiting rooms at the finest flagship hospitals in London – Chelsea and Westminster, St Thomas’ in Westminster, St Mary’s Paddington and the Royal London in the East End – had just a handful of patients.

It suggests people are afraid of going to casualty in case they break lockdown rules or catch the virus while there. The ordinary public seems to think that hospitals are dangerous places to be right now.

One allergy specialist told the Mail that in his north of England clinic, only the most seriously ill risk being infected by the virus.

‘These are people who are desperate for help. They will take a risk. Others are afraid of coming to my clinic and could lose their lives because of that.’

NHS England has produced a complex ‘road map’ for opening up hospitals to all patients. Those accepted for treatment or operations will have to isolate for 14 days and be clear of any symptoms before admission. Inevitably it will mean more delays.

Significantly, there will be tests on patients before they arrive to make sure they are Covid-19 free to ‘protect’ others working and being cared for in the hospitals.

But when the virus is defeated, children are back to school, shops reopened, and cities no longer in lockdown, what will happen to the countless numbers who are seriously ill and whose treatment has been delayed?

The NHS waiting list already stretches to many millions and now faces one of the steepest backlog of cases in its history.

The British Medical Association says that for doctors and all healthcare workers, this is a daunting prospect. 

A spokesman said: ‘They want nothing more than to provide the best care for their patients and avoid delays in essential treatment for diseases.’

One has to wonder whether the doctors’ goodwill will really be enough.