Published May 4, 2020

Cancer Screenings Have Dropped Nearly 70% Amid The Coronavirus Pandemic — Delays In Routine Checkups Disrupt Early Detection

Covid-19 has forced patients to delay routine checkups, leading cancer screenings to drop nearly 70% nationally and even more in hard hit cities. How will this affect early detection?

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Shelby Black

Cancer Screenings Disrupted By Covid-19

Cervical cancer screenings have dropped 68 percent nationally
In hard hit cities, other medical tests have dropped over 90 percent
Once cancer screenings start up again, many tests will be conducted within the first few months, but patients should consult with their physician about access to cancer screenings during coronavirus and whether it’s urgent.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has caused patients to delay annual hospital checkups, surgeries, and cancer screenings for months. In some hard hit cities, cancer screenings have dropped nearly 70 percent. Experts tell SurvivorNet that concerns among cancer patients are growing, but oncologists are trying their best to manage both Covid-19 and cancer patients.

According to a report from Reuters, cervical cancer screenings and other medical tests have dropped 68 percent nationally, and over 76 percent in California specifically, due to patients being forced to delay annual physical checkups. These tests are critical in detecting early signs of cancer, and delays may lead to cancer spreading undetected.

“What we’ve seen in the past is when we have a long period of time where there’s not a screening test or screening being done and then all of the sudden you start doing that screening again, we’re going to have what’s called the clearing out of the prevalences,” Dr. Otis Brawley, a medical oncologist and epidemiologist at John Hopkins University, tells SurvivorNet. “We’re going to have an increase in the number of breast cancers in the first couple of months after we start mammography screening again…I’m fairly comfortable that that’s going to happen in colorectal cancer and it’s also going to happen in breast cancer. Prostate cancer is a little bit harder to predict. Lung cancer where we have screening going on now is also a little harder to predict.”

In addition to severe drops in cancer screenings, other medical tests have taken a huge hit. In New York City, which holds the largest number of Covid-19 cases in the United States, A1C blood tests (which are crucial in detecting diabetes) have dropped more than 90 percent.

Regular screening tests can be very important in detecting early stages of cancer, and since Covid-19 has halted many screenings, some patients may be worried about their health.

“I think for everybody, cancer or no cancer, it’s an incredibly stressful time,” Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, tells SurvivorNet. “When you add cancer to it all, it’s stressful for many patients. They’re concerned about how they’re getting treatment, how they’re getting monitored. Can they have surgery? Can they even leave the house? We’re managing a lot for a lot of patients right now.”

Dr. Heather Yeo explains why early detection is so important for colon cancer

As many screenings tests have been delayed due to the virus, Dr. Brawley says medical teams will conduct many cancer screenings in the first few months once restrictions have been lifted.

“When we start opening the gates up and screening people again, those people will come in, [and] we’re actually going to screen a lot more people in that first couple of months than we normally do,” Dr. Brawley explains. “Because we’re screening more people then, we’re going to diagnose more cancer. The clearing out of the prevalences is simply the people who would have been diagnosed during the period of no screening [that] are diagnosed when we start screening again.