Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, part 2: Early assessment of the COVID‐19 pandemic’s impact on cancer diagnosis

Background With access to cancer care services limited because of coronavirus disease 2019 control measures, cancer diagnosis and treatment have been delayed. The authors explored changes in the counts of US incident cases by cancer type, age, sex, race, and disease stage in 2020. Methods Data were extracted from selected US population‐based cancer registries for diagnosis years 2015–2020 using first‐submission data from the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. After a quality assessment, the monthly numbers of newly diagnosed cancer cases were extracted for six cancer types: colorectal, female breast, lung, pancreas, prostate, and thyroid. The observed numbers of incident cancer cases in 2020 were compared with the estimated numbers by calculating observed‐to‐expected (O/E) ratios. The expected numbers of incident cases were extrapolated using Joinpoint trend models. Results The authors report an O/E ratio