Cancer and COVID

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Anchor lead: It’s time to resume routine cancer screenings, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Are you avoiding cancer screening tests because of the COVID-19 pandemic? A recent study shows that many people are. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, says the numbers are startling.

Nelson: Clearly cancer is an illness that is not going to go away by having people stay at home. What this article dives into is what about the screening itself? The study itself came from a medical records vendor EPIC and they looked in their medical records database. What they saw is between March 19 and April 20 compared to steady state eleven or twelve weeks last year they saw a stunning in appointments for cancer screening. They were down at least 68% for cervical cancer, colonoscopy down 86% and mammography down 94%.  :34

Nelson notes that there’s no question that catching cancer early is most likely to result in good outcomes, so resuming screening is your best strategy. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.