Streptococcus: Clinical Trials

(asked on 9th July 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress has been made on the Group B Streptococcus testing GBS3 trial; and when that trail is expecting to resume as covid-19 lockdown restrictions are eased.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 23rd July 2020

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, some aspects of the GBS3 trial were stopped temporarily, including the randomisation of sites to the different arms of the trial and recruitment of participants. However, the team continued with other research related tasks to ensure smooth site opening for the trial re-start.

Training, randomisation and opening of sites to the trial requires the full engagement of maternity and microbiology services. The GBS3 trial hopes to randomise the first sites in September and begin recruiting women early in 2021 but this is dependent on the status of services at the time. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has set out the Restart Framework to guide the restart of NIHR research activities which is available at the following link:

https://www.nihr.ac.uk/documents/restart-framework/24886

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