Dr. Colm Henry:

We are seeing this debt built up from the secondary effects of Covid, that is to say, people not coming. In the very acute period during the first surge, there was a drop off even of people presenting with time-critical conditions such as stroke and myocardial infarction. We and other healthcare systems noticed an understandable drop off in people presenting not just to rapid-access cancer clinics, and we facilitated that by creating extra clinics and resources, but also a drop off in registered cancers for 2020 of 12% so, as will happen in other healthcare systems, those cancers will present in a delayed way and perhaps upgraded. We have also seen a threefold increase in presentations and admissions for eating disorders. There was clearly a drop off in screening so we are doing catch up with that as well. Like other healthcare systems around the world, we are playing catch up on delayed presentations and deferred presentation of people.

That is a post-Covid phenomenon worldwide.