NIH Supports Post COVID Research

Francis S. Collins, MD., PhD, Director of NIH, https://www.nih.gov, has announced that NIH has made the first awards to do research on why some individuals of all ages who had COVID-19 don’t fully recover.

The individuals recovering from COVID-19 may or are developing new or returning symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, brain fog, sleep disorders, fevers, gastrointestinal symptoms, anxiety, and depression after recovery.

In trying to understand why some patients don’t fully recover from COVID-19, is now referred to as the RECOVER Initiative. NIH has awarded New York University School of Medicine just over $14 million to support the Clinical Science Core (CSC), which will lead building the RECOVER research consortium.

CSC will coordinate the data within the consortium and will develop methods to monitor protocols including recruitment, data quality, and safety measures in order to identify adverse events. The CSC will guide communication and engagement efforts with key stakeholders, including patients and healthcare providers.

The Biostatistics Center at Massachusetts General Hospital was awarded more than $8.6 million to support the Data Coordinating Center (DRC) which will provide data administrative management, tracking, work closely with CSC to implement agreements and patient consents, and coordinate the biospecimen collection and storage. The DRC will provide statistical expertise for clinical studies plus ensure data standardization, access, and sharing among RECOVER projects.

Over the next several weeks and months, NIH will make additional awards to ramp up research efforts and launch clinical trials to improve understanding of the debilitating condition and to help identify potential treatments to help the people that are affected.

On June 2, NIH hosted the first in a series of listening sessions to discuss input from people who have been directly affected by long term effects of COVID-19. For the listening session, go to https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=42174. In addition, the initiative can be followed on the new RECOVER website at https://recovercovid.org.