Estonian Health Insurance Fund to start covering cancer screening for uninsured persons 2020-12-23 BNS/TBT Staff
TALLINN - The Estonian Health Insurance Fund will start covering screenings for three types of cancer also for uninsured persons from next year for the purpose of including as many people as possible in screenings as, when detected in an early stage, cancer is treatable.
The adult population can undergo three types of cancer screening free of charge in Estonia cervical cancer screening, breast cancer screening and colorectal cancer screening. Each year, men and women born in a certain year are invited to take part in the screening.
Researchers at the University of Tartu have analyzed the data from the first eight months of 2020 on nearly 32,000 people, including those who had been tested positive for coronavirus during that period and those who had not. The initial results of the analysis showed that a coronavirus patient was mostly likely hospitalized due to pneumonia or acute bronchitis. Those who did not have COVID-19 went to the hospital mostly to give birth or for a medical repeat procedure.
Few studies in the world have analyzed the data of all people who have been tested positive for COVID‑19 among the population of one country. To assess the different factors related to COVID-19 morbidity, medical researchers of the University of Tartu decided to analyze the data of these Estonian residents who had been tested positive for coronavirus.