Publication date: Jun 02, 2025

Cancer screening lowers morbidity and mortality from cancer and is cost-effective. The COVID-19 pandemic upended cancer screening utilization in 2020 with data showing a deficit in screened patients in 2020 and 2021 as compared with 2019, with return to 2019 baseline screening levels by December 2022. The cumulative shortfall in screenings, lasting nearly 3 years into the pandemic, is predicted by models to generate an incremental population cancer burden in the out-years of the models. Recovery of screening rates may vary based on the racial or ethnic population, and time will tell if there is an uneven burden of future cancers that worsen cancer incidence and mortality in those populations, some even after years of gains of reducing disparities for cancer screening. For some cancer screenings, particularly cervical and colorectal cancers, use of at-home noninvasive tests may increase screening participation overall across multiple populations and help mitigate some of the screening shortfalls from 2020 to 2022 by elevating numbers of the population screened. For colorectal cancer, new additional comparably sensitive or ease-of-use noninvasive screening tests are being added for utilization.

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