President Joe Biden urged his staff on Tuesday to draught a national research plan on long COVID, a disease that is thought to afflict millions of people in the United States.
According to a White House information sheet, Biden issued a presidential memorandum asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services to “organise a new effort across the federal government to produce and deliver the first-ever interagency national research action plan on Long COVID.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, long COVID is a “broad variety of new, returning, or ongoing health problems patients can suffer four or more weeks after initially being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.”
Fatigue, cognitive fog, muscle or joint discomfort, and shortness of breath are all possible symptoms. Its cause has yet to be discovered.
“HHS will lead a government-wide interagency coordinating council, which will include experts from the Department of Defense, Veterans Administration, Labor Department, and many other government entities to coordinate both public and private sector work to advance our understanding of long COVID and to accelerate efforts to prevent, detect, and treat it in real time,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said during a press conference on Tuesday.
“We’ll share insights on how to prevent, detect, and treat extended COVID, and this concerted effort will guarantee that our research is focused on the people who need it the most,” Becerra added.
According to a report released last month by the Government Accountability Office, long COVID has “possibly harmed up to 23 million Americans, putting an estimated 1 million employees out of work.”
It noted, “The full amount of the health and economic repercussions is unclear, but is projected to be significant.”
Many people are frustrated by how slowly research on the disease is progressing.
The National Institutes of Health received around $1.2 billion in funding from Congress 15 months ago to explore long COVID, but STAT News reports that barely 3% of the projected patient recruitment has been completed.
In a news sheet, the White House stated that the project will “accelerate the inclusion of roughly 40,000 individuals with and without Long COVID.”
