Pandemic disruptions to health care worsened cancer survival, study
suggests
[February 06, 2026]
By MIKE STOBBE
NEW YORK (AP) — During the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts
worried that disruptions to cancer diagnosis and treatment would cost
lives. A new study suggests they were right.
The federally funded study published Thursday by the medical journal
JAMA Oncology is being called the first to assess the effects of
pandemic-related disruptions on the short-term survival of cancer
patients.
Researchers found that people diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and 2021 had
worse short-term survival than those diagnosed between 2015 and 2019.
That was true across a range of cancers, and whether they were diagnosed
at a late or early stage.
Of course, COVID-19 itself was especially dangerous to patients already
weakened by cancer, but the researchers worked to filter out deaths
mainly attributed to the coronavirus, so they could see if other factors
played a role.
The researchers were not able to definitively show what drove worse
survival, said Todd Burus of the University of Kentucky, the study’s
lead author.
“But disruptions to the health care system were probably a key
contributor,” said Burus, who specializes in medical data analysis.
COVID-19 forced many people to postpone cancer screenings —
colonoscopies, mammograms and lung scans — as the coronavirus
overwhelmed doctors and hospitals, especially in 2020.
Earlier research had shown that overall cancer death rates in the U.S.
continued to decline throughout the pandemic, and there weren’t huge
shifts in late diagnoses.
Recinda Sherman, a researcher on that earlier paper, applauded the new
work.
“As this study is the first to document pandemic-related, cause-specific
survival, I think it is important," said Sherman, of the North American
Association of Central Cancer Registries. “The more we understand about
the impact of COVID-19, the better we will be able to prepare for the
next one.”
How could overall cancer death rates decline in 2020 and 2021, while
short-term survival worsen for newly diagnosed patients?
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A radiologist uses a magnifying glass to check mammograms for breast
cancer in Los Angeles, May 6, 2010. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes,
File)
 Cancer prevention, diagnosis and
treatment measures that for years had been pushing cancer death
rates down did not suddenly disappear during the pandemic, Burus
noted.
“We didn’t forget how to do those things," he said. “But disruptions
could have changed access, could have changed how quickly people
were getting treated.”
Further research will show if any impact was lasting, said Hyuna
Sung, senior principal scientist and cancer epidemiologist at the
American Cancer Society.
“Transient declines in survival that quickly recover may have little
impact on long-term mortality trends," she said.
The new study tapped national cancer registry data to focus more
specifically on patients who had a first diagnosis of a malignant
cancer in 2020 and 2021. More than 1 million people were diagnosed
with cancer in those two years, and about 144,000 died within one
year, according to the researchers' data.
The researchers looked at one-year survival rates for those
patients, checking for what stage they were at the time of
diagnosis.
They calculated that one-year survival was lower for both early- and
late-stage diagnoses, for all cancer sites combined. Most worrisome
were large differences seen in colorectal, prostate and pancreatic
cancers, they said.
Overall, the researchers found that more than 96% of people who got
an early-stage cancer diagnosis in 2020 and 2021 — and more than 74%
of those with a late-stage diagnosis — survived more than a year.
Those rates were slightly lower than would have been expected based
on 2015-2019 trends, resulting in about 17,400 more deaths than
expected.
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