Cancerona: Challenges of Cancer Management in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has infected millions of people worldwide and emerged to be the biggest global health threat claiming hundreds of thousands of lives at exponential rates. The severity of the disease increases with old age and presence of underlying health conditions, such as cancer. Managing cancer patients under these circumstances is rather challenging, given their compromised immunity and the overwhelmed health care services by COVID-19 community transmission. Thus, it is prudent to establish common guidelines for the monitoring and treatment of cancer patients. In this review, we comprehensively investigate the various aspects of cancer care during the COVID-19 pandemic, discuss challenges faced while treating cancer patients, and propose potential approaches to manage COVID-19 among this vulnerable population. We also discuss molecular aberrations and genetic changes associated with cancer and their role in affecting the virus' infectivity and severity. Lastly, we shed light on therapeutic approaches that can encompass both diseases without compromising one over the other.

Severity and 1-month outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with solid cancers: a Danish nationwide cohort study

“…There is a consensus that cancer patients represent a particularly vulnerable population in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic [22] and cancer is in general more prevalent among older adults [3]. In a large Danish nationwide population-based cohort study including 11,122 SARS-CoV-2 positive cases [23], 20 % were hospitalized and 5.2 % died within one month of follow-up with age and comorbidities being strong predictors of fatal outcome.…”