The impact of COVID-19 on national screening programmes in England

Armitage, Richard C.; Morling, Joanne R.

Objectives To review the trends in adult national screening programme performance in England prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic and consider the future implications. Study design Quantitative, longitudinal. Methodology Publicly available data on quarterly uptake of the five adult screening programmes in England were obtained from Public Health England (PHE). Trends from 2017 to 2021 were reviewed and discussed. Results From 2019-2020 Q4 there were substantial reductions in performance in four of the five national screening programmes that were not in keeping with recent trends. Conclusion The reductions in screening performance coincide with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in England, and may be explained by the temporary suspension of national screening programmes, and the inability or unwillingness of invitees to partake in screening once the programmes had been restored. Due to the delay in publication of the analysed data, further COVID-19 lockdowns in recent months make it probable that the current true screening performance figures are substantially lower than those presented in this paper. The impact on screening programme performance is likely to be detrimental to patient outcomes, meaning remedial action is urgently required.