COVID-19 impact eases over time for Australian cancer patients
2 min read 20 June 2023
A major study of how COVID-19 affected Australian cancer patients has shown its impact eased through the pandemic as the arrival of vaccines, a less severe variant and early intervention treatments saved lives.
Led by Infectious Diseases researchers at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, the study assessed 620 cancer patients across 15 Australian hospitals who caught COVID-19 from March 2020 to April 2022.
Cancer patients are vulnerable to COVID-19 due to a weakened immune system being a common result of cancer or cancer treatment, reducing their ability to fight off and recover from any infection.
All-cause mortality in these patients in the 100 days after COVID-19 infection was 10.6% – well below the mortality seen internationally of up to 38% for patients with blood cancers, one of the highest risk groups.
“We found overall that one in ten Australian cancer patients who caught COVID-19 died within 100 days of the infection, either as a result of COVID-19 or an unrelated cause,” says Dr Victoria Hall, Infectious Diseases physician and PhD candidate at Peter Mac and University of Melbourne.
“While this is a significant loss of human life, it is well short of what was seen elsewhere for this vulnerable patient group.
“Contributing factors include that most Australian cancer patients caught COVID-19 in early 2022 during the Omicron wave and after COVID-19 vaccines had become widely available, and there were also measures in place to rapidly detect infections and provide protective antiviral treatments to this group.”
Dr Hall said like what was seen in the general population, the Omicron variant appeared to be less severe in patients with cancer than previous strains of COVID-19.
The average age of Australian cancer patients who caught COVID-19 was 63.5 years, with slightly more men (50.6%) and overall, 73.4% were vaccinated against COVID-19.
The rate of deaths declined over the course of the pandemic, with all-cause mortality in 2020 at 25.6% but in 2022 it was 8.1% in cancer patients.
“Just as we saw deaths in this vulnerable group decline over time there were also consistent drops in the rate of patients needing a hospital stay of more than 24 hours, those who required oxygen or an ICU stay, and those who required mechanical ventilation,” Dr Hall said.
Find the paper - titled “COVID-19 infection among patients with cancer in Australia from 2020-2022: a national multicentre cohort study” - online as just published in the journal Lancet Regional Health Western Pacific.
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Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre is a world-leading cancer research, education and treatment centre and Australia’s only public health service solely dedicated to caring for people affected by cancer.