The COVID-19 pandemic and impact on breast cancer diagnoses: what happened in England in the first half of 2020

Delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment due to the COVID-19 pandemic is a widespread source of concern, but the scale of the challenge for different tumour sites is not known. Routinely collected NHS England Cancer Waiting Time data were analysed to compare activity for breast cancer in the first 6 months of 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019. The number of referrals for suspected breast cancer was 28% lower (N = 231,765 versus N =...