Disruptions to cancer screening services have been experienced in most settings as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ideally, programmes would resolve backlogs by temporarily expanding capacity; however, in practice, this is often not possible. We aim to inform the deliberations of decision makers in high-income settings regarding their cervical cancer screening policy response. We caution against performance measures that rely solely on restoring testing volumes to pre-pandemic levels because they will be less effective at mitigating excess cancer diagnoses than will targeted measures. These measures might exacerbate pre-existing inequalities in accessing cervical screening by disregarding the risk profile of the individuals attending. Modelling of cervical screening outcomes before and during the pandemic supports risk-based strategies as the most effective way for screening services to recover. The degree to which screening is organised will determine the feasibility of deploying some risk-based strategies, but implementation of age-based risk stratification should be universally feasible.

由于 COVID-19 大流行，大多数情况下都经历了癌症筛查服务的中断。理想情况下，计划将通过暂时扩大容量来解决积压问题；然而，在实践中，这通常是不可能的。我们的目标是让高收入环境中的决策者对他们的宫颈癌筛查政策反应进行审议。我们告诫不要仅仅依靠将检测量恢复到大流行前水平的绩效措施，因为与有针对性的措施相比，它们在减轻过度癌症诊断方面的效果要差一些。这些措施可能会因忽视参加者的风险状况而加剧在接受宫颈筛查方面先前存在的不平等。大流行之前和期间的宫颈筛查结果建模支持基于风险的策略，将其作为筛查服务恢复的最有效方式。筛查的组织程度将决定部署一些基于风险的策略的可行性，但基于年龄的风险分层的实施应该是普遍可行的。