To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of impact of the reduction of clinical trials during the covid-19 outbreak on (a) the NHS and (b) medical research; and what step his Department is taking to support clinical trials and research to recover from the covid-19 outbreak.
This answer is the replacement for a previous holding answer.
Answered on
25 November 2021
During the pandemic research continued and there was no reduction in the number of clinical trials. However, non-COVID-19 studies were impacted by reductions in research delivery capacity and NHS services and many sponsors, funders and sites paused their studies. As of 31 March 2021, 81% of paused commercial studies and 77% non-commercial studies on the National Institute for Health Research’s Clinical Research Network portfolio had restarted. In June 2021, the Government published The Future of UK Clinical Research Delivery: 2021 to 2022 implementation plan to outline how we will support the recovery of research studies.