Allogeneic haemopoietic cell transplant services in Australia and New Zealand in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: a report from Australia and New Zealand transplant and cellular therapies.

Abstract

BackgroundThe COVID‐19 pandemic has caused major disruption to health systems, with allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplant (alloHCT) services a particularly vulnerable area. Ongoing provision of alloHCT has required dynamic responses at national and local levels. In Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), a high reliance on unrelated donors from overseas registries has posed an additional challenge.AimsTo describe the impact of COVID‐19 on alloHCT services in ANZ in the first year of the pandemic.MethodsData from the national alloHCT recipient and unrelated donor registries was extracted for a 2‐year time frame. Comparisons were made between a pre‐pandemic period of 1st March 2019 to 29th February 2020 and the corresponding dates during the pandemic, 1st March 2020 to 28th February 2021.ResultsThere was a 13% decrease in the number of allogeneic transplants, a reversal of steady increases in previous years, with the largest decrease in unrelated donor transplants. Local donors supplied a greater proportion of unrelated stem cell products. With a switch to universal cryopreservation, the time from request of a product to infusion increased by a median of 25.5 days for overseas products and 14 days for local products. There was a significant increase in the number of products collected but not used.ConclusionsA strong public health response and coordinated transplant community activities allowed for safe provision of alloHCT in ANZ, however our data suggests that the timely delivery of allogeneic transplants was affected by the COVID‐19 pandemic. Continued dedicated efforts are required to minimise further impacts.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.