Impact of Covid-19 on disruption of oncology clinical trials

Companies and organisations continue to report clinical trial disruptions, which includes delayed initiation, enrollment suspension and slow enrollment due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The total number of clinical trials disrupted showed slow enrollment was the top reason, followed by enrollment suspension and lastly delayed initiation (Figure 1).

When analysing these disrupted trials by therapy area, oncology leads all others in disrupted clinical trials due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Phase II has the most oncology disrupted clinical trials, followed by Phase I and then Phase III. A further breakdown can be seen in Figure 2. Furthermore, when looking at the region, North America outnumbered all other regions in disrupted clinical trials in both multinational and single-country trials. Europe was second in both, followed by Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa and South and Central America (Figure 3). North America far exceeds all other regions when it comes to single-country disrupted clinical trials.