UK Coronavirus Cancer Monitoring Project

The support from this project came from numerous groups. There was widespread support in the oncology professional communities including the Royal College of Radiologists,[7] Association of Cancer Physicians[8] and Action Radiotherapy,[9] with the Royal College of Radiologists noting that the project was an example of “best practice to benefit oncology patients”. Early academic institutional supporters were the University of Birmingham, University of Oxford and University of Leeds, and patient support groups include Macmillan Cancer Support.[10][11]

The project was launched in just 100 hours as a result of the pressing urgency of the clinical situation. The initial phases of funding were largely achieved through the donation of time and resources from the supporters and advocates of this project. The University of Birmingham played sizeable role in this process, with the pro-vice-chancellor dedicating the computational and human resources of the University's Centre for Computational Biology, the Institute of Translational Medicine and scientists from the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences.

All UK Cancer care centres were invited to participate in UKCCMP. Coronavirus Cancer Reporting was lead by a Local Emergency Response Reporting Group at cancer centre who typically included doctors, nurses and other medical health professionals.[12] Communication channels were rapidly established between UK cancer centres with local reporting of all COVID-19 presentations. Weekly updates were dispatched to oncologists around the country achieving real time reporting.

The project aimed to provide regular data releases to clinicians to provide insight of high clinical utility to inform and facilitate key decision makers[2] To this end, the project has encouraged a more collaborative approach to patient and clinical management across UK Cancer Centres.

The project was the joint first to recognise that the risk of COVID-19 and chemotherapy was significantly overstated. Previously, UK guidelines has suggested "patients with COVID-19 are at risk of severe disease following systemic anticancer treatment".[13] The UKCCMP identified that recent chemotherapy use did not significantly increase mortality from COVID-19,[14] and this was subsequently confirmed by a US cancer COVID-19 registry [15] and a French breast cancer registry.[16]

The project was also the first to perform an analysis by cancer subtype identifying that blood cancer patients were at significantly increased risk.[17] They also found that risk was lowest in patients with breast cancer and ovarian/cervical cancers, and highest in those with prostate cancer. This effect was largely driven by the protective nature of being female and the risk factor of being of increasing age.[18]

A number of smaller projects were also initiated as a result of this project, all aimed at promoting the safety of cancer patients during the pandemic. This included the UK Birmingham Chemotherapy cancer COVID-19 project which analysed the utility of testing every patient on chemotherapy for COVID-19 using PCR nasopharyngeal swab screening.[19]

The first recorded cases of COVID-19 in cancer patients started in March 2020. Numbers were initially slow, but by April 2020, number of cancer patients with COVID-19 reached their peak, with over 300 cases were being recorded each week. As a result of data from this project and NHS guidance about the delivery of cancer care during the pandemic,[20] widespread changes to cancer care was implemented to reduce risk to cancer patients. The number of COVID-19 in cancer patients decreased during June and July and in the entire month of August, only one case of a cancer patient with COVID-19 was recorded.

The UK Coronavirus cancer monitoring project is a clinician-led reporting project which depends on the time and skills of the oncology community in the United Kingdom. The project was conceived on 18 March 2020 and launched on 26 March 2020 with support from the University of Birmingham and several oncology organisations within the United Kingdom.[3][11] The project team is chaired by Professor Gary Middleton, Professor Jean-Baptiste Cazier, Professor Rachel Kerr and Dr Lennard Lee, and is composed of academic and clinical teams led by the scientific board for data acquisition, analysis and dissemination. The project management team consists of researchers from all major UK cancer centres including King's College London, University of Leeds, University of Edinburgh, the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, and University College London.[21]