As more nations are re-enforcing lockdown measures due to a globally rising number of COVID-19 cases, especially in Western countries such as the US and Europe, clinical trial activity is expected to resume at a much slower rate than originally anticipated, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

As of October 15, the number of resumed trials has increased from over to 741 trials to 808 trials. Out of these, 82.4% are currently recruiting participants, 7.3% have completed recruitment but are still ongoing, and 0.5% of trials have yet to start recruiting subjects.

Priya Nair, Trials Intelligence Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “There is a small but steady increase of trials resuming activity. Initially, the general trend showed a gradual increase in the overall percentage of trials for each trial status, the biggest of which has been seen in ongoing, recruiting trials and ongoing, not recruiting trials. However, between September 21 and October 15, ongoing, recruiting trials only increased from 82.2% to 82.4%, and completed trials only increased from 6.4% to 6.8%.”

The US has the highest number of resumed trials at 70.7%, followed by the UK at 8.6%, France at 7.4%, Spain at 6.9%, and Germany at 6.4%. The UK has also had an increase in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, jumping from Tier 1 to Tier 2 of the Government’s lockdown rule agenda and enforcing local lockdowns.

Nair adds: “Companies should continue to review alternative approaches by using remote measures and virtual clinical trials that aim to bring studies directly to the patient via online data collection and video call progress checks.”