NHS England has revealed that visits to the NHS website cancer page rose by 373 per cent after the announcement that the Princess of Wales has been diagnosed with the disease.

NHS England figures have shown that in the 24 hours after the princess announced she was undergoing treatment, there were 2,840 visits to the page on cancer. This is nearly five times as many as over the same period the previous week, when there were 600 visits.

There was also a large increase in visits to the NHS website’s cancer symptoms page, with 4,172 visits in the 3 hours immediately afterwards – an average of 1 every 3 seconds. In the same period the week before, the page had 1,922 visits.

The numbers peaked immediately after the announcement, with 1,678 visits to the symptoms page between 6pm and 7pm on Friday.

The NHS website is the UK’s largest health website and records an average of 2 million visits each day. It has over 4,000 pages and gives information about 990 medical conditions.

NHS England’s national clinical director for cancer, Professor Peter Johnson, said: “Receiving a cancer diagnosis can be very daunting – it turns your life upside down and speaking about it can be really difficult for people – the Princess of Wales bravely speaking out about her diagnosis will help others to do the same.

“Thanks to this, we have seen a spike in people visiting vital information on our website about signs and symptoms – there is no doubt that talking about cancer saves lives if it encourages people to come forward sooner if things aren’t right.

“1 in 2 people will develop some form of cancer in their lifetime and detecting the disease early gives the best chance of successful treatment. Today in the NHS, we are checking more people than ever before and importantly, more cancers are being diagnosed at an early stage than ever before and survival rates are at an all-time high.

“Anyone with unusual or worrying symptoms should visit their GP and take up screening appointments when invited”.