Health

Highlights

Higher mortality from other causes is offset by lower mortality from respiratory diseases

The COVID-19 Mortality Working Group continues to compare the predicted number of deaths based on their modelling against the observed number of deaths using the latest available data to 31 August 2021. In the year to date, deaths from all causes were close to predicted, despite the 79 COVID-19 deaths in August. Other respiratory deaths – mainly flu – remain significantly lower than in previous years.

The implications of delays in cancer diagnosis

A concerning development associated with the COVID-19 pandemic has been that people have been unable to, or less inclined, to seek medical care and performing fewer diagnostic tests. The focus of this article is the impact of delayed diagnostic procedures for colorectal cancer. However, we also present data that has generally shown fewer diagnostic tests and associated therapeutic procedures being performed during COVID-19.