Researchers have delved into the cancer registry to see what happened during the pandemic.
- Care has primarily been affected in the way that we have succeeded in making fewer cancer diagnoses, says Johan Ahlgren, operations manager at the Regional Cancer Center Central Sweden, who led the study.
Cancer screening for hundreds of thousands of people was canceled
The decline in cancer diagnoses between March and October last year was a total of 9.3 percent.
But there is no indication that cancer cases have decreased in reality.
Rather, many more cancer cases are now undetected.
For prostate cancer, the number of cases detected has decreased by 20 percent.
- I think we will see a certain increase in mortality for some of the cancers.
But then exactly how many individuals it is about, I think it is too early to say, says Johan Ahlgren.
In England, three different studies have tried to calculate how many lives canceled cancer care has cost during the pandemic and land on different estimates between 2500-18,000 extra dead.
People with heart attacks stayed at home this spring
The Swedish heart register Swedeheart has also seen a sharp decline in patients who sought care when the pandemic struck.
In the beginning, the number who came in with a heart attack was halved.
- When the pandemic struck, our patients disappeared.
We could see that in the short term it seems that they are sitting with their heart attacks and they probably also die to some extent at home, says Stefan James who is a professor of cardiology at Uppsala University.
- The price when it comes to the dead or seriously ill is difficult to measure.
It is not quite as big as I feared in April and May, but we will see a price in the form of increased morbidity and mortality, Stefan James concludes.
Play the clip to hear how cancer patient Emma's care has been affected by the pandemic.
See more about how the pandemic affects society in the World of Science
- The Corona Fight's prize, Monday 1 March at 20.00 on SVT2 or on SVT Play from 28 February.