Study Links Early Pandemic Cancer Disruptions to Lower Survival

A large, federally funded study in JAMA Oncology finds that Americans diagnosed with cancer during the first two years of the COVID‑19 pandemic had worse one‑year survival rates than similar patients diagnosed from 2015 to 2019, even after excluding deaths primarily attributed to the virus itself. Using U.S. national cancer registry data, researchers followed more than 1 million people whose first malignant cancer was diagnosed in 2020–2021 and found about 144,000 died within a year, with survival declining for both early‑ and late‑stage disease and especially pronounced drops in colorectal, prostate and pancreatic cancers. Lead author Todd Burus of the University of Kentucky says the study cannot definitively prove causes but points to pandemic‑driven disruptions in screening, diagnosis and treatment access as the most likely culprits, a view echoed by outside experts. The work reconciles earlier data showing overall U.S. cancer mortality continued to drift down during the pandemic by suggesting that long‑running advances in prevention and therapy stayed in place even as newly diagnosed patients fared worse in the short term. Public‑health researchers say the findings should inform contingency planning so that routine cancer care is shielded as much as possible the next time a public‑health emergency hits.