Companies and organisations continue to report trial disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which includes delayed initiation, delayed enrollment, and slow enrollment. As the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths continues to rise, GlobalData has also continued analysis of disrupted clinical trials since the beginning of the pandemic.
Although the number of disrupted clinical trials continued to increase through 2020 and into 2021, the number of clinical trials disrupted varies depending on the therapy area. For example, when looking at the percentage of these top therapy areas and not all disrupted clinical trials, and when comparing April 2020 to February 2021, it can be seen that the number of oncology, gastrointestinal, respiratory, and immunology trials saw a decrease. Oncology saw the biggest decrease in the number of disrupted clinical trials by 4.9% followed by respiratory at 2.8%. Other therapy areas such as musculoskeletal disorders, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular, and the central nervous system saw an increase in disrupted trials. The central nervous system saw the most increase by 4.1% followed by metabolic disorders with a 3.3% increase. A further percentage breakdown for these top therapy areas only can be seen in Figure 1.
With trends such as these, it can be seen that some therapy areas have a better outlook than others, it is hard to determine when and how long disrupted clinical trials will take to come back to normal.
