CANCER treatment waiting times have been hit by the Covid pandemic.
Latest figures show for the year to date 84 per cent of patients were seen within two weeks of referral against a national standard of 93 per cent.
Only 62 per cent of patients started treatment within the required 62 weeks against a target of 85 per cent.
At a meeting of the Mid & South Essex Clinical Commissioning Group joint committee on Thursday, Karen Wesson, Director of Commissioning, Performance and Emergency Planning, said: “We are currently off plan and not achieving our trajectory. Some of the recent impacts of that have been an increase in the number of Covid patients and the Covid pathway which has resulted in some surgeries being cancelled but we are working with our cancer alliance colleagues to look for mutual aid for that surgery.
“We are also looking at the pathways we have got in place locally for cancer and doing some recovery work with our cancer transformation service which is recruiting additional staff for navigation to make sure we get people on the right pathway with the right support.
“In addition we have the rapid diagnostic centre service doing a lot of work with primary care
