Evening Standard comment: We have lessons to learn from lockdown

The worrying figures disclosed today by the Evening Standard about the huge decline in the number of Londoners being referred to hospital by their GP for an urgent cancer check are another indication of the potentially catastrophic, but until now largely overlooked, consequences of the coronavirus lockdown.

Our research, produced in conjunction with the charities Macmillan Cancer Support and Breast Cancer Now, shows, for example, that there has been a 50 per cent drop in London patients being sent for examination for fast-spreading melanoma and a 47 per cent drop in breast cancer checks, which equates to 3,000 fewer women having suspicious lumps examined.

All this is deeply troubling and indicates, to our immense regret, that lives that might have been saved will instead be lost, depriving children of parents and many others of loved ones unnecessarily.

The problems with cancer are just some of the hitherto hidden consequences of three months of lockdown that this newspaper has been highlighting this week. It is vital that we do so, because lessons must be learned for the future.

As our investigations have shown, victims of domestic abuse and their children have been placed at huge risk because vulnerable families were deprived of visits they would previously have received from social workers.

In most boroughs, families are still not receiving any home visits, one-on-one, but are only being checked in on by telephone or via Zoom.

At the same time, the Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, has warned of a “lost generation” of children and, via the Standard, issued a warning about the lasting educational, emotional and psychological harm inflicted on pupils kept from school and the company of friends and teachers for an unimaginably long time.

Meanwhile, the National Obesity Forum says today that many children are likely to have put on weight during the lockdown — which again raises the prospect of further lasting damage to their futures.

What all this shows is that the Government’s trumpeting of pubs and bars reopening and quarantine ending — which are all very welcome and needed to help get our economy moving again — must not obscure the urgent need for action to help those who have suffered.

That’s particularly the case because significant numbers of those worst affected will be from groups, including black and other minority communities, who already suffer from disadvantage and who are likely to find it hardest to overcome the impact of the pandemic on their lives.

There are other lessons too for ministers and for us all, particularly if further lockdowns are needed. The focus on reducing the immediate death toll from Covid-19, which was right and understandable, has led to a lack of attention on the less visible damage of lockdown, which we are now only beginning to come to terms with, including victims who might have escaped the disease itself but will now pay a heavy price, and even suffer premature death.

We need constant focus on these issues, and data must be collated so that if lockdown comes again, or another pandemic strikes in the future, we will be far better prepared.

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London lockdown cancer timebomb: Thousands missing urgent checks