It’s been more than three years since Congress directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate the long-term effects of COVID-19—and there are still no answers for the millions of Americans suffering from long COVID. The NIH launched the $1.15 billion RECOVER initiative in early 2021 to understand, prevent, and develop potential treatments for long COVID.
The NIH set deadlines for certain goals to be met when it allocated funding. But according to documents obtained by The Sick Times, MuckRock, and STAT through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the goals outlined in contracts between the NIH and the institutions tasked with leading the research have not been met despite passing the deadline, and nearly all of the initial funding has already been allocated. “It’s a waste of money,” Dr.
Darrel DeMello, a COVID-19 specialist, told The Epoch Times in an email. Dr. DeMello believes there should be a solution or a series of solutions for treating long COVID by now.
Collectively, these three contracts account for a significant portion of the $1.15 billion that Congress allocated to the NIH for long COVID research in 2020. The contract documents offer insights into how the NIH established its long COVID research initiative, the scientific expertise that the NIH prioritizes in its research teams, and RECOVER’s initial goals and timelines.
Selecting researchers who have never treated acute COVID-19 infections will yield results, as those who treat COVID.
