Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to present today, especially given that right now it's daffodil month, or cancer awareness month.
Unfortunately, cancer does not stop being a life-changing and life-threatening disease in the middle of a global pandemic. More than a million Canadians are living with and beyond cancer. While the impacts of COVID-19 will be felt for months and years to come, so too will the needs of people with cancer and their caregivers change as the impacts of the pandemic evolve.
While most provinces postponed elective surgeries in some form or another during the first wave of the pandemic, some have fared better in addressing this backlog. In certain areas, the surgical backlog continues to grow. According to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, during March to June 2020 most people with conditions requiring life-saving and urgent surgery received care. That said, nationwide, cancer surgeries were 20% lower compared with the same time period in 2019.
In Ontario nearly 36,000 fewer cancer surgeries were performed in the spring of 2020 as compared with the year before. Going into the third wave of the pandemic, Ontario had an accumulated a total backlog of over 200,000 surgeries across all categories, with some cancer surgeries again being postponed. In Quebec there were 6% less surgical procedures in oncology performed compared with last year. That represents around 2,200 surgeries.
Through trends in inquiries to our information and support programs and ongoing national surveys of people facing cancer, and their caregivers, we have a sightline into the continued impact that disruptions to care are having on people affected by cancer. A July 2020 CCS patient survey found that almost half reported having their cancer care appointments postponed or disrupted during the first wave of the pandemic. We are concerned that the third wave in parts of Canada will result in more disruptions to cancer care.
The severity of surgical backlogs must not be underestimated. Results of a study involving Canadian cancer patients published in the British Medical Journal suggest that people whose treatment for cancer is delayed by even one month have about a 10% higher risk of dying. Risk also increases the longer it takes for treatment to start.
I will now turn it over to Kelly Masotti.