A TOP cancer doctor is leading calls for Covid-19 restrictions to be eased “immediately”.

Professor Angus Dalgleish, a consultant oncologist who was one of the signatories of a letter calling for the government to end coronavirus restrictions, says he does “not see any reason” to wait until June 21 as set out in the Government’s road map.

He said: “In my own professional capacity, we have people who’ve struggled and carried on with symptoms of cancer, too worried to come into the hospital to get treatment, and now it’s progressed further their outlook is even worse.”

He added: “We’ve got tens of thousands of cancer patients who should have been diagnosed and treated, with a much better outcome.”

Devi Sridhar, public health professor from the University of Edinburgh, told the programme: “We still have a lot of unvaccinated 40-year-olds, 30-year-olds – these people are still at risk of serious illness.

“I find it astonishing that, while there’s anti-lockdown protests in Britain, we’re seeing across the world absolute carnage in terms of lives being lost outside hospitals because people can’t get care.”

She added: “People want to go to places and do want to enjoy their lives, but they want to do it safely because I think in general the public understands this is such a serious virus and you don’t want to acquire it at any age.”

  • What do you make of the verdict? Are you a cancer patient whose treatment has been impacted by the pandemic? Were you scared to go for treatement?

Tell us your story - email andy.mitchell@newsquest.co.uk 

In other Covid news, the government says a further six people have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Monday, bringing the UK total to 127,434.

Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have been 151,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.

The government also said that as of 9am on Monday there had been a further 2,064 lab-confirmed cases in the UK.

It brings the total to 4,406,946.