New data from Statistics Canada shows there were far fewer people diagnosed with cancer in the first year of the pandemic even though more than 140,000 new cases were reported to the Canadian Cancer Registry (CCR) in that year.
While this may sound like good news, the drastic drop in the detection rate between 2020 and pre-COVID years suggest many new cancer cases may have gone undiagnosed rather than the number of cancer incidences actually shrinking.
According to the data, released on May 16, the incidence rate in 2020 was 449.5 new cancer cases per 100,000 people—which is 12.3 percent lower than the average annual rate calculated over the previous five-year period—after age and population changes were adjusted for….