Long-term COVID is a multifaceted condition that can follow SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infection, affecting the nervous, cardiovascular, pulmonary, hematologic, and endocrine systems, with milder symptoms. to debilitating diseases. From a public health perspective, the long-term impact of COVID is enormous.Recent reviews published in Nature It is estimated that at least 65 million people worldwide have already experienced it.
In August 2022, the Brookings Institution estimated that the long COVID is wiping out the equivalent of 2-4 million full-time workers from the American workforce and about $170 billion in lost revenue annually. Did. Economist David Cutler draws a similar conclusion, further estimating that over the long term, the health impact of COVID on the United States is in the region of $100 billion annually. Estimates of these sums mean that over five years he will actually cost over $1 trillion. This does not take into account the declining quality of life, the increasing costs of the disabled, and the strain on caregivers and health care systems. In our role as observers of the health and economic impact of his COVID over time, these cumulative effects are breathtaking and deeply alarming.
Yet unlike the initial response to acute COVID, there is no “operation warp speed” for prolonged COVID.
Each new COVID infection has the potential to lead to long-term COVID, so the best way to avoid it is to avoid getting COVID in the first place. However, we have largely abandoned society-wide measures to prevent disease transmission, making it difficult to avoid infection, which has forced us to rely on his COVID prevention and treatment over the long term. It means you don’t get it, which you can’t do at this time. Despite the rising number of cases and the growing suffering of those caring for long-term COVID-19 patients, the science of this aspect of the disease lacks transformative investment and action.
The resources assembled by federal agencies, private companies, and philanthropists to fight the long-term COVID pale in comparison to the resources spent developing vaccines, tests, and treatments for acute COVID. Search NIH research repositories using the terms “Long COVID,” “Acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2,” “PACS,” “Post-COVID Syndrome,” or “Long Distance” for perspective (accessed 23 March 2023). It turns out that $740.8 million in federal funding has been allocated for his long-term COVID research across 218 projects. Most of that ($509 million) was allocated in 2021. That’s just 6% of his $11.6 billion funding and reflects just 2.7% of the 8,042 COVID-specific projects. General research. Compared to 2021, the proportion of funding spent on long-term COVID research in 2022 has been cut by almost half (from 11% to 6%). This represents an even larger decline than might be expected, as total funding for COVID research declined over that period. .
In March 2020, people started sharing their experiences of being sick after an acute infection with COVID, leading to the name “long COVID”. But it would be more than two years before the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) released its National Research Action Plan on Long-term COVID. The plan announced a long-term COVID research and practice office that has yet to be launched. The RECOVER initiative, which aims to better understand the long-term effects of the disease, has just spent $1.15 billion on his long-term study of COVID over the next four years. This amount is disproportionate to the scale of the problem. Moreover, scientists and patient advocates criticize the distribution of these funds as inefficient and opaque. A Rockefeller Foundation report earlier this year found that the NIH has funded only eight of the 200 ongoing clinical trials for long-term COVID registered at clinicaltrials.gov, and data sharing, It recommends broad improvements to long-term COVID research, including increased transparency, coordination and leadership. , patient engagement and information dissemination.
The Rockefeller report called on the NIH to accelerate ongoing long-term COVID research, stating that “the world knows so little about long-term Covid that this must change.” The private sector response was even more disastrous. Biotech and pharma have largely ‘avoided’ his long-standing COVID problems, and only began to take serious action in mid-2022.
Undoubtedly, the myriad symptoms of COVID pose challenges to treatment development. Perhaps the potential return on investment is less clear for his COVID in the long term than for vaccines and treatments. But the ongoing narrative that COVID is no worse than the common cold if it doesn’t result in hospitalization or death completely dismisses the significance of long-term COVID, which can occur after even mild infections. . As a country, we cannot accelerate and adequately fund his long-term science on COVID without taking it seriously.
The world’s extraordinary progress on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments shows that coordinated efforts across governments and industry can be achieved in the short term for the public good. The ‘warp speed’ response to long-term COVID depends on factors such as risk factors for long-term COVID, whether and to what extent vaccines and acute treatments protect against long-term COVID, and factors such as type and number of vaccines and treatment regimens. It might give you a better understanding of how protection differs. Treatments, COVID variants, and viral load. We need to know more about how to define, diagnose, and classify long-term COVID to help health professionals recognize COVID more consistently and understand its incidence and prevalence more accurately. Health care providers and those co-existing with COVID-19 for a long time also urgently need more guidance to inform support, prognosis and care.
Momentum, political will, and multi-sectoral funding will allow multiple potential disease pathways to be investigated at once, including autonomic nervous system injury, immune scarring, viral persistence, and coagulation activation. And although further basic research may be needed to fully understand some pathways, we don’t have to wait for these results. We don’t have to wait for these results to start developing treatments for the chronic inflammation and coagulopathies already known to plague long-term COVID patients.
We all hope the pandemic is over. However, as the number of people battling a mysterious disease continues to grow, there is little scientific understanding of its mechanisms and management, and little effort has been made to prevent its outbreak, we are at risk of the long-term COVID crisis. maintaining the situation. The reality is that if COVID is not dealt with over the long term, the pandemic is guaranteed to continue, with devastating consequences for society as a whole.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily Scientific American.
