NIH documents show how $1.6 billion long Covid initiative has failed so far to meet its goals
More than three years ago, the National Institutes of Health launched a $1 billion-plus initiative to find the root causes and potential treatments for long Covid, the chronic disease that has quickly changed the lives of millions of Americans.
But a lack of visible progress from the initiative, called RECOVER, has drawn months of criticism from patient advocates, researchers, and lawmakers, including at a Senate hearing last week on the NIH’s budget. “We gave [the NIH] a chance and they bungled it,” said John Bolecek, who has lived with long Covid for two years and has closely followed RECOVER. The program has done nothing “to narrow down what’s actually going wrong with people,” or identify treatments, he said.
